


Daughters of Hungry Ghosts

by zoicite



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Friends to Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Canon, Resurrection, Sharing a Bed, also features cameos from camilla hect and coronabeth tridentarius, background camilla/corona, really old people getting it on, wild speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2020-12-24 20:33:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21105581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoicite/pseuds/zoicite
Summary: Harrow and Gideon and times they have (and also have not) shared a bed over the years.





	1. Seven

The Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, age seven, is pouring tea into a mismatched set of chipped old cups when Gideon Nav bursts into her bedroom weilding a sword.

“Ya ha!” Gideon cries, one small hand on her hip as she pushes the practice sword into the air and bares her teeth at Harrow. 

Harrow starts, surprised, and instantly loses focus on the task at hand. Her guests (who were previously holding their finger sandwiches high, ready to eat) crumble into piles of dust at their seats. 

“Griddle!” Harrow shouts, enraged. She can feel heat flaring up her neck, sparking instant flames across her face, the red obscured only by a thick layer of paint. “You were not invited!” 

Gideon was not invited because Gideon only knows how to _destroy_. Harrow stands and throws a cup of cold water at Gideon’s head. Gideon has always been very fast, faster than Harrow, and she ducks, knocking the cup from the air with her sword. It breaks, shattered pieces of ceramic hitting the wall beside Gideon. Gideon is splashed with some of the water, so at least there’s that, but Gideon isn’t even wearing any paint to smudge. Harrow will be telling Sister Lachrimorta that Griddle’s skipping the paint again as soon as she’s done dealing with this intrusion.

“Defeated!” Gideon announces as she dances around in a stupid pounding circle, celebrating her victory over three child-sized skeletons holding tea sandwiches. “Defeated without a single blow! Victory to the Ninth!”

“I _am_ the Ninth!”

“Victory for the Second then! For the Cohort!” Gideon veers. She snarls, an ugly twist to her face that she’s clearly picked up from Crux’s repertoire of facial tics. 

Harrow stomps past Gideon, yanks the door open, and begins shoving Gideon back out into the corridor. Gideon resists, looking over Harrow’s shoulder, back toward the places Harrow has set on her small table.

“What’s that?” 

“Nothing now,” Harrow snaps, pushing at Gideon’s shoulders, her arms and her back. “You always ruin everything.”

Gideon brushes Harrow aside, like Harrow’s nothing more than a tiny wisp of cobweb fluttering against her shoulder instead of a full girl pushing against Gideon as hard as she can. At eight, Gideon Nav is a lanky mass of bright red energy, always zipping around Drearburh, hiding behind doorways, jumping from dark corners to scare nuns mid-prayer. When she isn’t locked in her room as punishment for scaring nuns mid-prayer, that is. 

Harrow rushes back to the table, determined to protect whatever’s left in tact from Griddle’s clumsy hands. 

Gideon is staring at the plate of sandwiches, and Harrow pulls the plate toward her, begins plucking the pieces that fell when her skeletons disintegrated. The book that Harrow read in preparation for this gathering was from the Eighth House and claimed that cucumber sandwiches are the best choice for a tea party, but Harrow’s never seen a cucumber, so her sandwiches are primarily grated snow leek and gravy pressed between two pieces of flimsy. Harrow examines the sandwich, carefully brushes dust from the flimsy. There’s nothing she can do about the bone dust stuck to the leeks, so she sets the sandwich carefully back on the small plate. 

“What were you doing?” Gideon asks again. She sets her sword into a pile of bones.

“None of your business,” Harrow returns, her nose pushed up in the air.

Gideon moves to pick up a sandwich, examines it, turning it over between her fingers. “Is it good?”

Harrow shrugs. She wants to knock it out of Gideon’s hand. She wants to smash the black pasty leek mush into Gideon’s stupid face. She _wants_ to resurrect her skeletons and kick Gideon’s dumb butt back out into the corridor.

“It looks like flimsy.”

“Taste it,” Harrow challenges. “Go on.”

Gideon sticks out her tongue, touches it to the salty leeks at the center of the sandwich. She tries to take a bite out of all three layers together, but the flimsy is tough and doesn’t want to tear. She gets a mouth full of leek instead. She gags and spits it onto one of Harrow’s plates.

“You’re disgusting,” Harrow says.

“It _is_ disgusting,” Gideon agrees. “What is all this anyway?”

“It was a party. One that you very specifically were not invited to.”

Gideon seems unphased by this. She stares at Harrow for a moment, then shrugs and raises her sword to point it in Harrow’s general direction. “Where’s your army, Reverent Scum?”

“It’s Revenant Scum, you knucklehead! You dolt!”

The Reverent Scum’s harsh words fail to deter Gideon, who just puffs up her chest and makes the correction. “Where’s your army, Revenant Scum?”

Harrow sighs heavily and gives in. She focuses, feels the pressure build, and Harrow and Gideon watch as Harrow’s skeleton guests pull themselves back together, three, plus three more for a total of six. Gideon’s eyes widen. She clearly anticipated only the first three. Good. 

Harrow screams (more to surprise Gideon further than anything else) and her constructs all storm Gideon at once. Gideon is ready. The skeletons try to lift her bodily by the arms, but she sees it coming and starts hacking away with her sword. She manages to knock two down in the first few moments and Harrow clenches her fists tight and forces them back together. They surge forward and rejoin the fray.

Harrow kicks off her shoes and climbs up to stand on her bed. She can survey the scene better from here, can see Gideon struggling with the bony hands clutching at her clothes and her hair and her face, six skeletons all trying to poke knobby fingers into amber eyes. Gideon pushes one of the skeletons hard and then bashes it with the side of her sword. The skeleton stumbles back and lands in the very center of Harrow’s tea party, shattering ceramic and coating everything in a layer of sticky leek and bone dust.

“Griddle!” Harrow bellows.

She raises two more skeletons to take that one’s place, full size this time, adult forms that tower over everyone else in the room.

She doesn’t have a lot of time left to best her foe. It’s almost time for evening services and the sounds of destruction are sure to draw the nuns soon, rushing in to see what’s happened. None of the nuns are particularly fast, luckily. Still, the noise might bring Harrow’s parents, and then Griddle will be sorry.

Gideon’s managed to get her back turned away from the door, and she’s advancing into Harrow’s room instead. When she gets close enough to where Harrow stands on the bed, Harrow jumps, tackling Gideon to the floor with a shout.

Now it’s Harrow and seven skeletons against one girl sprawled on the floor, Harrow’s fingers scratching and pulling at Gideon’s hair until finally, _finally_ Griddle cries out her surrender.

Harrow’s skeletons freeze immediately, standing back and straightening up.

Harrow stays where she is, straddling Gideon’s prone form, one hand keeping Gideon’s sword arm pressed to the floor, the other pulling at a chunk of Gideon’s hair.

“I won.”

“You won,” Gideon admits from the floor, her cheek pressed to the dusty carpet. She doesn’t even seem mad. Harrow’s worked up into a froth of rage and blood sweat, and Gideon’s defeated, on the floor, and smiling. She’s so simple -- that’s what Harrow’s mother says. Harrow agrees. Gideon doesn’t even see what a loser she is.

A drop of blood falls from Harrow’s nose and lands on Gideon’s cheek. That somehow finally drives Harrow’s victory home and Gideon squeezes her eyes shut and turns her head away. “Okay! I said you won! Gross. Get off me!”

Harrow rolls off of Gideon, lying on her back beside Gideon on the floor. 

That’s no good. She feels blood hit the back of her throat and she coughs and sits up. Her skeletons are cleaning up the remains of Harrow’s tea party, but she abandons the effort and the skeletons fall into a pile of bone chips and dust. The pressure in Harrow’s head subsides.

The Secondarius Bell rings for evening services, and Harrow stands and starts brushing off her robe, shaking it over Gideon so that dust falls on Gideon’s face. Gideon squeezes her eyes shut, but doesn’t move. Harrow promised her father she’d lead the call-and-response portion of the service. She leaves Gideon sprawled across the floor and begins fixing her face paint. Her hair is speckled grey with bone dust, and she pulls up the hood of her robe to cover the mess. 

She’s putting her shoes back on when Gideon finally pushes herself to her feet.

“Finally,” Harrow says. “I thought you’d _never_ leave.”

Maybe Gideon was actually planning to leave Harrow alone, hard to say, but not anymore. Harrow’s words visibly snap something in Gideon’s expression, and she changes her mind and climbs onto Harrow’s bed instead. 

“No, you don’t.”

“Wow,” Gideon says, wriggling her body against the blankets. “Wow. Wow.”

Harrow looks up at the ceiling and lets out a long sigh, the same sigh her mother exhales whenever Harrow and Gideon’s fights turn violent, which is usually. 

“This is really soft,” Gideon says, spreading out her arms and legs. “Wow.”

Harrow narrows her eyes and pushes at Gideon’s shoulder as she passes by to collect her prayer beads from her wardrobe. “Get out!”

“Just a minute.”

“No, you’ve had too many minutes already, and we’ll be late if we don’t leave.”

“So you go,” Gideon suggests. “I’ll be gone by the time you return.”

“So you can snoop through my things!”

“Are you joking?” Gideon props herself up on her elbows to shoot Harrow an incredulous look. “You have nothing I’d be interested in snooping in ever. You are the most boring person in the history of the universe, Harrow. More boring than everyone on the Sixth and Eighth combined. More boring than Crux knitting socks. More boring than -- Like -- okay. You’re _maybe_ the most interesting person here, other than me and Aiglamene, but that is _really_ not saying much when it comes to Aiglamene. Also, not all of us are thieves and sneaks like you, _Reverend Daughter of the Nincompoops_. Geez.” 

The Secundarius Bell rings again and Harrow really will be late if she stays to give Gideon what’s coming to her.

“Fine,” Harrow snaps. She tries one last time. “Aren’t you coming to services?”

Gideon shakes her head, rolls her eyes and spreads her limbs wider across Harrow’s bed.

Harrow bangs her feet impotently against the floor, bellows in frustration, and then stomps toward the door.

“You better be gone by the time I get back, or I’m going to make your bones dance you right out the airlock.”

She can’t actually make that happen… yet. Doesn’t matter. If there’s any better motivation in the world than Gideon Nav, Harrow’s yet to find it.

“Harrow,” Gideon says when Harrow’s almost out.

Harrow stops, her small hand gripping tight to the door frame.

“I would have come to your tea party,” Gideon says. “It looked fun.”

“You weren’t invited. You’ll never be invited, Griddle.”

“Yeah,” Gideon agrees in a tone that sounds to Harrow like ‘we’ll see.’ She accompanies her response with a shrug and a smile as she falls back on the bed. 

Harrow turns and runs toward the sanctum, knucklebones clacking against each other in her pockets.

**

When Harrow returns from the evening service, Gideon is still there, asleep in Harrow’s bed. 

Harrow’s fists clench at her sides. She pulls up three skeletons and they start toward Griddle’s sleeping form. Their hands are almost on Griddle when Harrow pauses. She spies Gideon’s practice sword abandoned on the table beside a pile of shattered cups and plates. The skeletons stop and wait. 

Harrow’s quiet as she approaches the sword, lifting it carefully from the debris on the table. Gideon doesn’t move. Harrow arranges the skeletons over Gideon so that if Gideon wakes while she’s gone, she’ll be in for a fright. And then Harrow backs quietly out of the room.

She thinks about simply tossing the sword over the edge of the tier, watching it disappear down the center of the shaft. Gideon will guess that first though, before looking anywhere else. It’s enough that Griddle will go all the way down there just to find no trace of her beloved sword, and then she’ll have to trudge all the way back up again. 

Harrow can do better.

There are still nuns clicking their beads in the sanctum, eyes closed, deep in prayer, and Harrow pauses and goes through a round of her own prayers before moving on, stuffing her beads back into her pocket.

She’s got it. She knows exactly the place. 

Harrow hides the sword in the last place she knows Gideon will ever think to look, on a shelf in the library behind a row of dusty unread necromancy texts from the Third. The sword is completely invisible once Harrow slides the last book back in place. If Griddle looks hard enough, eventually she’ll see Harrow’s fingerprints in the dust, but it’ll take a while for Griddle to willingly examine any books that closely.

When she returns to her room, Gideon still hasn’t moved and the skeletons are still looming over her, exactly as they were when Harrow left. 

Harrow nudges the tallest one aside and reaches out to shake Griddle’s arm.

“Get up, jerk.”

“Mmph,” Gideon mumbles. She’s drooling on one of Harrow’s pillows. Nasty.

“Griddle,” Harrow says. “Get out or you’ll be carried out and dumped down the waste shoot.”

Nothing.

“Get out or I’ll make sure you’re forced to attend services every day until you’re one hundred and eleven years old.” (one hundred and eleven is the age of the oldest nun on the Ninth, Sister Nitenance. It’s the oldest Harrow can imagine anyone ever being, though of course, the King Undying is way older.)

A soft snore.

“And you’ll have to sit next to Crux.”

Harrow contemplates grabbing Gideon’s ear, twisting it until Griddle shouts and jumps from the bed. She knows, though, that if Gideon wakes to her ear being ripped off her stupid head, the first thing she’ll do is reach for her sword, and then she’ll be off searching before Harrow even gets to relish the fact that she’s taken it from right under Griddle’s dumb pointy nose.

Harrow has a big armchair in the corner of her room, partially covered in texts she’s been studying and a pile that she’s yet to open but hopes she’ll get to soon. She climbs into the chair amidst the books, curls up and waits, eyes and skeletons pointed at the girl sleeping in her bed.

Griddle snores and drools and doesn’t wake. Eventually Harrow’s eyes start to feel heavy and the tallest skeleton sinks to its knees and crumbles to the floor. The others follow shortly after, startling Harrow upright. Harrow stands and kicks off her shoes. She changes into her nightclothes and then crawls into the bed from the bottom, finding room between Gideon and the wall. She’s too close to Griddle, can feel the other girl’s radiating warmth, a sharp contrast from the cool wall of Drearburh. 

Harrow turns toward the wall, keeping her body as compact as possible. She’s still wearing all of her paint, but she’s not taking that off with Griddle here, so she’ll just have to sleep in it. Her face feels strange and tight, unused to setting her cheek to her pillow covered by a layer of greasy paint. Sister Gaurica will make a stink about the stains when she sees. 

Harrow’s nearly asleep when she hears Gideon snort softly beside her. Harrow tenses and waits.

Nothing happens until Harrow’s body begins to relax again and then -- 

“Good night, loser,” Griddle whispers.

Harrow gasps. She flips and hits Gideon hard, a push with all four limbs. Griddle falls off the edge of the bed and lies there laughing amid a pile of bones. She’s up and out of the room before Harrow can come after her, the door slamming shut in her wake.

Harrow throws the pillow that’s covered in Griddle drool and then falls back onto the bed. 

“Good luck finding your sword,” Harrow sings quietly to the empty room. She shuts her eyes, relieved to finally have her space to herself again, and falls asleep.


	2. Eleven

Harrowhark, age eleven, is used to finding Gideon Nav exactly where she shouldn’t be. She’s used to turning corners in Drearburh and finding Griddle there, sword in hand, destruction alight in her eyes. She’s used to expecting Griddle at services only to find her doing hand stands alone in her room instead, a makeshift barricade against her door to keep everyone away. She’s used to finding Griddle trying to climb out of the airlock and into any shuttle that happens to appear, even if that shuttle is going somewhere just as insufferable, somewhere like the Eighth or the Seventh. 

So, considering the history, Harrow’s not especially surprised when she walks into her parents’ rooms and finds Griddle there, lifting up the bottom of the Reverend Mother’s church robe to check out what’s going on underneath.

“How did you get here?” Harrow demands, though her voice comes out sounding more resigned than enraged. 

“Stole a key from Crux,” Gideon admits, which is the answer Harrow should have expected, because it’s the way this always goes. Gideon steals keys from Crux, Harrow slips bone fragments through keyholes and cracks blood ward bypasses. Either way, they both get in where they shouldn’t be in the end. 

“There were wards.” Gideon should not be able to get past her wards.

“Really?” Gideon asks, leaning back on her knees. “I guess your wards must suck.”

Harrow’s wards most certainly _do not_ suck. Harrow must have forgotten to set the wards before leaving her parents the night before. Careless.

“You can’t be here,” Harrow says, her frame frozen and her voice ice. She’s the last child of the Ninth; she’s lived in the Locked Tomb. Harrowhark Nonagesimus knows cold.

“They’re getting worse,” Gideon points out. 

“It’s fine,” Harrow counters. 

“It’s nasty.”

“You’re nasty.”

“Maybe I am, but I’m not _this_ nasty,” Gideon says, her face twisted up to illustrate her point, and also to show how nasty she is. She has three pimples on one cheek, several more on her forehead. They should be covered by her paint, but of course, no paint for Griddle, just big red blotches, smaller red blotches, weird yellow eyes and funny colored hair. Disgusting. Gross. Blech. 

“It’s _fine_,” Harrow insists, shoving Gideon aside so that her mother’s robe falls to the floor. Her parents don’t move, sitting stone still and facing each other.

“Her leg is black,” Gideon points out.

“Griddle,” Harrow groans, but it comes out sounding pretty whiny. 

Gideon throws up her hands at Harrow. She stands and steps away from the Reverend Mother.

Harrow stares at Gideon for a long time, waiting for her to leave. Gideon doesn’t, just stares back at Harrow instead. No one else on the Ninth is this dense. Further proof that Gideon is not one of theirs. 

“Why do you even care?” Harrow asks, finally. 

Gideon shrugs. “I want to know how stupid the living skeletons of the Ninth really are. They’ve gotta be pretty stupid to believe this, or mostly blind.” Gideon pauses to consider this. “Actually, yeah, mostly deaf and blind probably helps you a lot.”

“You have a better idea?”

“Yeah,” Gideon says. “I have lots of better ideas! Loads! How about you tell everyone what happened, then you put these two in the catacombs where they belong, and later, once they’re nothing but bone, you can walk them around all you want. What’s the difference? You’re either running the show with your great-aunts -- might as well be dead -- or you’re running the show with your actually dead parents.”

Gideon thinks for a moment and then continues: “Or we all just give up and move somewhere warm and nice and where there are other kids and things to see and do. The Locked Tomb isn’t going anywhere, no one except you can even get in there without ending up super dead. No one else in 10,000 years has even tried!”

“You don’t know that,” Harrow cuts in. At least two other people have tried, but they hadn’t made it more than a few steps. Their bones are still in there, scattered across the floor.

“_Or_, you could tell everyone what happened, and maybe the Necrolord Prime will send someone from the Cohort to lead us until things improve!”

Harrow rolls her eyes. She’s seen enough of Griddle’s comic collection to know where this is going. “You’d like that.” 

“Yeah,” Gideon agrees, crossing her arms over her chest. “I would, actually.”

“And then, once your big strong Cohort captain isn’t needed here anymore, you’ll hitch a ride with her off the Ninth, and you’ll never think about any of us ever again.”

“My favorite dream!”

“Never going to happen,” Harrow says, short and clipped. 

“So you’re just going to let them rot and cover it up with robes and cloaks?”

“Yeah,” Harrow says. “Yeah, because that’s the best thing we _can_ do. Honestly, Griddle. You don’t know a thing about it.”

Harrow kept to her parents’ rooms for one straight week following their death, surrounded by books, dry blood crusted on her face, doors stacked with enough wards to keep out the King Undying himself (well, probably not Him). She didn’t sleep, but she did pass out occasionally, which was pretty much the same thing. 

The Reverend Mother and Father had decided to concentrate on penitence following the death of their beloved cavalier primary, Mortus the Ninth. That’s been the story for the past year. That first week Crux stood stationed outside the door to field questions when they came, to stop the wailing and banging from Sister Glaurica against the heavy door, a constant battle. 

Harrow’s great-aunts were the only people who knew exactly what Harrow was attempting to do, and the only reason they let her attempt it alone was because they could not see in order to do it themselves. They would have, they said. They would do the same as Harrow if they were in her child-sized shoes. Just until she’s old enough to rule on her own, just long enough so that no one outside the Ninth will try to intervene. Eight years. They can keep it up for eight years. 

“How come they don’t smell?” Gideon asks, leaning close to Harrow. 

Harrow takes a step back. “Why would they smell?” 

“Um. Because they’re rotting from the neck down?”

“They aren’t,” Harrow insists. “They just look like they are. You can’t understand the theorems, so stop trying. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“I understand what body decomposition looks like. Also half the nuns are in worse shape! And they _do_ smell!”

“See,” Harrow shrugs. “I guess it’s not so bad then, is it?”

“No, you’re crazy. It’s definitely bad. Also -- ” She points toward the unmade bed. “Do you put them in bed at night?”

“No!” This is how it always happens! Gideon Nav shows up where she doesn’t belong and before Harrow knows what’s happening, heat is rising to her face and she feels an overwhelming urge to strangle Griddle until her whole stupid head matches the color of her hair. 

“So you’re still sleeping in here,” Gideon concludes.

“No,” Harrow says. It’s the truth. She comes in and rumples the bed sheets so that the room looks lived in, so that anyone who manages to get past her wards will believe that her parents actually live and move here. The cleaning is done by skeletons, but Harrow can’t be sure that they won’t be followed. Gideon’s proof enough of that. 

“You aren’t sleeping in your room though,” Gideon says.

“How would you know?”

Gideon shrugs and Harrow makes a note to search her room from top to bottom. Griddle’s clearly booby trapped the place, which means it’s time for Harrow to push enough bones through Gideon’s keyhole that Gideon wakes up surrounded by Harrow’s skeletons, ready to pound Gideon right into the mattress before Gideon has even a second to reach for her sword. 

But also, yes. Gideon’s right. Harrow hasn’t been sleeping in her room every night. 

In truth, she splits her time between Drearburh and the Locked Tomb. She’s good at getting past the locks, the wards, and the barriers. She’s fast. It took her an entire year to get past them the first time, an entire year before she figured out how to exploit the blood ward bypass. It doesn’t take her long at all now. An hour and she’s there. She brings a waterproof bag and strips off all of her clothes, stuffing them inside before she crosses the salty water of the pool. On the other side she re-dresses before she enters the sepulchre, her face bare of paint. There’s hardly any room for her inside with the girl, but Harrow’s small, she fits. She sits and stares at the woman — girl — locked there, frozen, for hours. 

It’s worth it, what she did. This is worth it to lose her parents. It’s worth it being born in the wake of two hundred dead children to know that she was born to keep this safe.

Harrow prays that that which is buried remains buried, in perpetual rest. She prays it lives and it sleeps. She prays it wakes and looks down on Harrowhark and smiles.

Harrow’s fallen asleep staring at the woman’s face only to wake hours later alone in the dark, shivering, her hand torch the only light. 

It should be terrifying, falling asleep down there alone, so far from anyone’s reach, but there’s nowhere else that Harrow feels safer. And besides, she’s seen a lot of terrifying things in her eleven years, heard about even more. A scary dark tomb protected by the most deadly necromancy Harrow’s ever seen seems like nothing when compared with her parents choking, hands scrabbling for the rope pulled tight around their necks, their skin turning red, then purple, and Harrow left holding the noose, helpless and entirely alone. It seems like nothing when compared to two hundred children breathing in nerve gas just so Harrow could live.

After a year it’s clear that Harrow entering the Tomb has not changed anything about its contents. The girl is not thawing, or waking up, or starting an apocalypse. She will not stand over Harrow and smile her approval. Harrow’s parents died for absolutely nothing. 

“Fuck you,” Harrow says now, surprising Griddle with the outburst. It’s not the first time she’s cursed at Gideon, but it’s still new enough that it feels especially good falling from her young mouth, no one there to tell her to stop, to mind her words, to act her age.

It’s too much to ignore suddenly, pain and anger and frustration all flooding Harrow at once, all focused in on Gideon Nav. Harrow’s parents died for _absolutely nothing_ and whose fault was that? It was Harrow’s, it was their own, and it was Gideon’s, always exactly where she isn’t supposed to be, always trying to destroy Harrow’s life. Well, she succeeded! If Harrow’d been given the time she needed -- if she’d had this full year, she could have _shown_ her parents that they were wrong -- that Harrow was right to try, to show her worth. That she’s proven that _everything_ was worth it. The Ninth’s sacrifice was worth it -- look what they kept! Look what they protected! Look at her face! At her hands clutching her sword!

“Fuck you!” Harrow cries again. She sees Gideon as she was a year ago, standing at her parents feet, snitching and smiling, so sure Harrow was in for it now. Gideon who never knew her place. Gideon who accused Harrow of hiding her sword behind the stone years ago, insisting that Harrow must have done it, that Harrow was smart enough and talented enough that she found a way. The sword was behind a row of books, but now the idea was planted in Harrow’s head, tugging and pulling, and two years of that -- Harrow gave in, had to try it. Had to see if she could.

She rushes at Gideon, pounds on her chest. Griddle, for her part, is smart enough not to react, not to try to hold her back. Her arms stay limp at her sides. She takes the beating of Harrow’s small fists, stands her ground and doesn’t move until Harrow turns away and screams, the cry tearing from her throat, painful and raw.

When she runs out of air, Harrow takes a deep breath, another.

“Harrow?” Gideon asks after a while. Her voice sounds a little scared, a little hysterical. Harrowhark ignores her.

She concentrates on her parents instead, lifts her father from his chair, pushes him toward Gideon, slow and silent. She keeps her eyes on Gideon, so Gideon does not see that her concentration is elsewhere. Gideon doesn’t notice. She’s still focused on Harrow. She doesn’t notice the Reverend Father standing behind her until his hands are reaching up, wrapping around Gideon’s neck. His fingers tighten at Harrow’s command, constricting, silencing. 

Gideon doesn’t have her sword. She doesn’t have anything, and Harrow watches her with cold eyes as she panics and thrashes against the much larger body of the Reverend Father. 

The Reverend Mother is up now too, coming to stand beside her husband, her hands reaching for Gideon, intent on holding her down, forcing her to succumb.

Gideon tries to scream, struggles, and then she goes limp, looks at Harrow with terror in her eyes that slips into resignation.

Harrow hesitates then, just for a moment. Just long enough for her father’s hands to fall slightly slack, for Gideon to feel the change, gulping air into her lungs. Just long enough for her to kick out at the Reverend Mother, to elbow the Reverend Father in the gut.

“Fuck _you_,” Gideon spits back, once she can breathe again. She surges forward, getting right into Harrow’s face. Harrow’s sure that Gideon will hit her. She really hopes that Gideon hits her. Please, please, hit her already. She deserves it. She deserves punishment, but Gideon holds back at the last moment, her hands coming up to rub at her own neck instead. “_Fuck you._ Fuck, Harrow. You’re really trying to give me _more_ nightmares?”

Oh, poor Griddle. Poor poor Griddle, she has it so bad. As though Harrow’s sleep is sound, as though Harrow isn’t a walking terror, a living nightmare.

She doesn’t understand why Griddle doesn’t just _leave_. Not the Ninth; Harrow can’t allow that. Her aunts have made that clear -- Gideon Nav is bound to the Ninth, or Gideon Nav must die with their secrets. Aiglamene and Crux agree with Sister Aisamorta, Sister Lachrimorta. Harrow is eleven years old, and she understands that her aunts know better than she does. She’s eleven years old and forced to make terrible decisions every day.

“I hate you,” Harrow says. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you for everything you’ve done to me. You should be dead, you know that? I should have fucking killed you.”

“Maybe,” Gideon agrees, quietly, but she still doesn’t leave. “You want to try?”

“I have tried!” Harrow shouts, which is a lie, despite appearances. Harrow can’t imagine a life without Gideon there, acting like the most frustrating pain in the butt of Harrow’s life. She hates her, that’s true, but without Gideon, who else is there? Ortus is old and mind-numbing. He barely bats at the skeletons Harrow throws toward him, lets them wrestle him to the ground without a fight. He’s supposed to be a cavalier now and he’s never put a single ounce of effort into anything. He does nothing to challenge Harrow, does nothing that forces her to grow.

Gideon on the other hand -- without Gideon, would Harrow test her limits, push beyond them? Would Harrow think to attempt the impossible?

She’s imagined Gideon hanging from a noose instead of her parents. She’s imagined Gideon frozen behind ice and stone. She’s imagined Gideon falling down the shaft, just like her mother did, except Gideon doesn’t have a suit or a shoot or a baby strapped to her back and she hits the bottom in with a sick bone cracking crunch. Music to Harrow’s ears! But no, Harrow probably doesn’t actually want Gideon dead, and she hasn’t _seriously_ tried. 

Gideon, somehow, seems to find Harrow’s attempts to hurt her useful, training for a Cohort she’ll never be allowed to join. 

Harrow begins pulling skeletons up from every bone in the room, an army, a mob, her mother and father there in the center, and no way for Gideon to get to her sword.

Gideon curses under her breath, not prepared for a skeleton gauntlet. Too bad. Testing limits is the only thing they’re good for together. 

“Go on, Griddle,” Harrow says, her voice low. “You had your chance to leave, and you stayed. Let’s see you get out now.”

“Crazy psycho bone bitch,” Gideon mutters under her breath -- and yeah, maybe. Maybe that’s true. Maybe that’s what it takes to be the best necromancer the Ninth House has ever produced. Maybe that’s what it takes to kneel before the Locked Tomb, to gaze on that face frozen in time. 

Maybe it’s all too much for a child of eleven. 

They’re surrounded now, skeletons on all sides, crowding the room, obscuring Gideon’s view of her sword.

“Come on,” Gideon grunts, pushing against skeletons with her shoulders, punching her way forward toward the door. 

It’s too many. More than Harrow’s ever created at once, but she keeps them upright, keeps them focused on Griddle, keeps her parents there, a waiting threat.

Eventually Gideon manages to push against the bone current, manages to reach her sword. She’s right beside the door, but she doesn’t try to leave. She turns back, swinging, bones flying in her wake. 

Harrow’s nose is bleeding. She feels it drip from her upper lip and she ignores it, doesn’t stop. She’s pushing too hard. She can’t hold it much longer, but she keeps pushing anyway.

There’s bone dust in the air. It sticks to her face and burns when she breathes. Gideon coughs and hacks with her sword, skeletons falling to pieces one after another. She’s shouting, but there’s no one here to hear her. No one is allowed anywhere near these rooms. Harrow makes sure the skeletons keep coming. She pushes and pushes until her vision is red and blood chokes her throat. She pushes until her fingers feel damp and her robes stick to her skin. She pushes. 

**

She wakes up with a start.

It’s so dark. For a moment she assumes she’s back in the Tomb. 

No, not the Tomb. She’s in bed, covered in a blanket. She sits up and turns on a light. Her parents’ room. They sit exactly where they should be, in chairs opposite one another, faces turned toward each other. 

No, that’s not right.

There’s a large pile of bones at their feet. 

Something moves beside her and she turns to find Gideon still here, asleep in the bed beside her. Gideon hasn’t climbed underneath the blankets with Harrow. She’s resting on top of all of the covers, curled up close with her back pressed to Harrow’s side. 

Harrow pulls away from Gideon, shifts away fast so they no longer touch.

The movement wakes Gideon and she turns to blink sleepily at Harrow.

“Why are you still here?” Harrow asks.

Gideon blinks again, slow, her face all screwed up at the bright light. She rubs a hand over her eyes. “Didn’t want Crux blaming me if you actually hurt yourself.”

“Hurt myself?”

“Your eyes and ears were bleeding.”

“You’ve seen that before,” Harrow points out. Gideon rolls onto her back and stretches, limbs pulling high over her head. Harrow flinches away before any part of Gideon can touch her.

“Your fingernails were bleeding,” Gideon continues. “You looked like you were going to burst, just literally explode and rain your blood and guts across the whole room, and then just your skeleton would be standing there, still trying to -- I don’t even know what you were trying to do.”

“I was trying to explode,” Harrow offers. There’s a purple bruise forming on Gideon’s neck, thick and ugly. Harrow has to look away.

“You almost made it. Good job.” Gideon knocks her hand against Harrow’s side to bring her attention back. Harrow pushes her way, but then she catches Gideon’s eye. The look she gives Harrow is hard, dead serious. “Don’t ever do that again. I mean it.”

Harrow shakes her head. She can’t promise that.

“Harrow -- “

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Harrow says, honestly. Harrow is the Reverend Daughter. The last Keeper of the Locked Tomb. Harrow is the culmination of two hundred children of the Ninth, of her parents, of Mortus, of a girl chained to rock and frozen, sword in hand. 

“I’m just saying -- I’ll fight all of the skeletons you can create. I’ll fight skeletons until you really do explode, but not your parents,” Gideon says. “Unless you want their bodies destroyed. Then, okay, sure. I still don’t want to do it though. It’s fucked up, Harrow. Even for you.”

Why doesn’t Gideon Nav just leave her alone?

“Go away.” Harrow says. She doesn’t want to look at Gideon anymore. She doesn’t want to know how her parents made it back to their chairs. She doesn’t want to know how she came to end up here in this bed, tucked in and sleeping beside Gideon Nav. 

Gideon is quiet for a moment, and then she sits up, swings her feet off the edge of the bed. 

She turns back to Harrow. “I’m not going to say anything to anyone here. I would have done it by now if I planned to.”

“I just want to forget about you,” Harrow says. She’s so tired. She misses the cold and the quiet of the tomb, the serene face of her warrior, chained tall and proud and everlasting.

“Okay,” Gideon says after a moment. She turns so she’s kneeling closer to Harrow, her eyes bright now, a little excited. “Okay. I want that too! So let me keep training with Aiglamene, and in a couple years, send me to Trentham! We’ll never have to see each other’s faces again. You can forget I ever existed.”

Harrowhark Nonagesimus is eleven years old and forced to make decisions that shouldn’t be hers to make every single day. 

“I can’t.”

Gideon eyes darken and she nods. It’s the answer Gideon expects. She picks up her shoes and her sword and leaves Harrow there without another glance.

Harrow waits until she’s sure Griddle’s actually gone, and then she slips out of bed. She finds her shoes discarded on the floor and slips them on. She resets the bone wards, carefully, checking her nose for bleeds. She’s okay. She can make it. If she’s careful, she can still get in.

Harrow returns to the Tomb.


	3. Sixteen

There is no heat in Drearburh. 

They first begin to notice the increased cold following the fourth sounding of the Secondarius Bell. Harrow sends a group of nuns and penitents down the shaft. She goes with them, though she does not understand the inner workings of Drearburh, and has never cared to learn. It usually works, keeps them breathing, and that is all that Harrowhark Nonagesimus, age sixteen, cares to know. 

As the lift descends, it’s immediately clear that something isn’t right. The usual song of Drearburh’s depths is missing some of its melody and there is an unusual CLANK CLANK CLANK from somewhere below.

Once they arrive at their landing, they begin walking the labyrinth of cages, eyes attempting to adjust to the dreary depths, peering into each niche at the humming generators, until finally they come to three that sit quiet and one that clanks loudly. Several of the nuns, already hard of hearing, actually hold their hands over their ears to dull the racket.

“There’s the issue!” Sister Scaibosa shouts.

“Yes,” Harrow agrees, eyeing Scaibosa. The corners of her mouth are sticky from a lack of hydration, her eyes bloodshot and wide. “Clearly.”

No one in Drearburh can fix this. They have no mechanics, no specialists. Unless the problem can be fixed with prayer or bones, the Ninth needs help from outside. She’ll have to call for them to send someone from the prison. 

“Someone check the ventilation,” Harrow orders.

Oxygen and ventilation are, thankfully, fine. They’ll still freeze to death, but at least they’ll be able to breath while doing so.

“I will alert my parents,” Harrow announces. “They will send word to the prison. The prison will send someone to make the repair. Until that time, we must do what we can to stay warm. Gather together and bundle up.”

Sister Scaibosa has already returned to clicking her prayer bones as though the bone hitting bone, her prayers to the Tomb, will generate enough heat to warm her arthritic old bones.

Once Harrow is back up on the main tiers of Drearburh, she calls the prison. They seem entirely unconcerned, but promise to send someone down to check it out. They won’t give her a time. Why they put what essentially amounts to a Second prison on the Ninth, Harrow will never understand. The Second couldn’t give two shits if the Ninth freezes to death. Should have done 9,000 years ago, they’ll say.

The prison isn’t actually Second House -- Harrow wouldn’t be able to abide calling them at all if it was. It hasn’t been Second for thousands of years, but they certainly still _act_ like the Second.

Call made, Harrow busies herself directing skeletons to gather blankets and beds, bringing them into one of the lower halls, slightly warmer and more contained than the great arched hall used for gatherings and services. 

Harrow refuses to lose a single one of the Ninth’s fragile and already woefully diminished numbers because of some broken generators. Not today. They have enough bones here.

**

It’s evening before Harrow sees any sign of Gideon Nav. Griddle appears to be sticking to her usual routine of never doing anything that she’s supposed to do, whatsoever. Harrow finds her jogging in circles through the planting fields, damp with recyc and smelling faintly of piss. Harrow could think of better places for a jog, places that didn’t leave you wet and stinking afterward, but she’s never bothered to say so to Griddle. Gideon always does the exact opposite of everything Harrow says, even when Harrow’s saying it very much for Gideon’s own benefit. Like what she’s about to say now, for instance. 

Harrow already knows how this conversation is going to go and it hasn’t even begun.

Gideon jogs past Harrow twice, taking her time loping around the field. The buzzing lights and the irrigation mist create a glowing aura around Gideon’s bright head. Finally, Gideon decides to acknowledge Harrow’s patient presence, slows to a stop in front of her. Gideon’s hands come up to rest on her hips. She’s breathing hard and her chest is flushed red where it’s exposed above the stretched neckline of her shirt.

She doesn’t say anything, just stands there and waits for Harrow to say whatever she came to say. Gideon used to love fighting with Harrow, used to seek Harrow out. Not anymore. Hasn’t done in years now. 

“Why couldn’t you have been obsessed with becoming a mechanic?” Harrow asks, thoughtfully. “Much more useful for the Ninth than a Cohort soldier who will never join the Cohort.”

“Why don’t you know how to teach your skeletons to fix generators?” Gideon returns immediately. She doesn’t bother with the Cohort comment. Griddle still thinks she’ll figure out a way to get out of here eventually.

Griddle reaches down to scratch beneath the cuff on her ankle. Crux fixed Gideon with a security cuff when she was thirteen and nearly made it off the Ninth.

“You’re going to freeze to death tonight,” Harrow says. She makes sure to keep her tone light, like maybe it’s actually something she really wants. Gideon has to believe that or this will never ever work.

“Wow,” Gideon returns. “Cool. Okay. Thanks for the vote of confidence. Very cool.”

“Merely the truth,” Harrow says. “Everyone on the Ninth is sleeping within Drearburh tonight so that no one succumbs to the cold. The lower hall has been set with beds and blankets. You’re out here running around in recyc. Do you plan to keep it up all night? Is this how you’ll stay warm?”

“So you’re here to invite me to your slumber party,” Gideon guesses. So much for Harrow’s grand plan.

“As much as it pains me to say it, yes. You need to come in with the rest of us.”

Gideon shakes her head, laughs. “Nope. No thanks! I’ll take my chances with the freezing to death.”

“Griddle -- “

“Not happening,” Gideon repeats. “You get me inside the doors and the next thing I know I’ve got five arthritic nuns painting my face and forcing knuckle beads into my hands. The next thing I know I’m tasked with lugging bags of bones up from the catacombs. The next thing I know I have the Reverend Father’s hands literally wrapped around my fucking neck. No way.”

“It’s just one night,” Harrow sighs. 

“Is it?” Gideon asks, hands back on her hips as she leans forward into her question. “Has the prison confirmed that they’re definitely sending someone tomorrow?”

Harrow presses her lips tightly. No. There’s been no confirmation yet.

“They’re probably hoping we all freeze to death. Why not? Saves them some trouble, doesn’t it?”

“You’re coming in with the rest of us,” Harrow asserts. “That’s all there is to it.” She’s been very patient. She tried the nice route. She did her part.

“Like Hell I am!” Gidean’s arms are folded over her chest now. She’s doing it on purpose so that Harrow can see the bulge of her stupid biceps, as if that’s going to impress or intimidate Harrow of all people. Yes, Griddle. We see. You’re the only person on the Ninth invested in push-ups, and now that you’ve been doing them for five years straight, they’re finally a little noticeable. You’re very special indeed.

“Don’t make me forcibly drag you in,” Harrow warns, once she’s over the ridiculousness of the arm display.

“Oh, you think you could?” Gideon laughs. A very stupid comeback, all things considered.

“Why not?” Harrow shrugs. “I’ve done it before, haven’t I?”

Gideon doesn’t bother responding to this, mostly because it’s the truth. She doesn’t snap back “You, and what army,” because Griddle knows all about Harrow’s army, knows them more intimately than anyone else here, has the scars and bruises to prove it. Gideon might have gone out of her way to leave Harrow alone these past five years, but that doesn’t mean that Harrow’s given up on surprise skeleton ambushes. She likes to think she deserves some credit for the stupid arms. She’s clearly the motivation behind them.

So no, Griddle doesn’t bother responding the way she would have when they were young. She knows better now. She tries a different tactic, one that’s already been proven to work.

“What’s going on?” Gideon asks, yellow eyes suddenly squinting and suspicious. “Harrowhark Nonagesimus, are you getting weird about me? Did you break the generators just to get me into bed with you? Are we going to have pillow fights and do each other’s makeup? Cuddle?”

Harrow rolls her eyes. She’s heard this before. Sometime, around the age of fourteen, Gideon determined that she’s an attractive specimen. Hot, gorgeous (Gideon’s own words). 

To be fair to Gideon, it’s not like she has much competition here. Sure, compared to Sister Scaibosa, Gideon’s stunning, all muscle and rosy warmth. Then again, Sister Scaibosa’s so close to the grave that even Ortus Nigenard is a model specimen beside her, and Ortus looks like a sad saggy sack of bones pulled together by the most inept bone magician Harrow can fathom.

All right. Well, that’s it then. There’s no way Harrow’s pushing the topic anymore now. 

“Okay,” Harrow shrugs, voice upbeat, as cheery as Harrow can manage even on her best days. “Die then.”

She turns on her heel and walks away, leaving Gideon Nav to soak herself in mist made from recycled piss.

**

Gideon’s security cuff goes off four hours after the rest of the House settles down to try and get some rest. Harrow sits up from where she’s wedged between her dead parents and Aiglamene, as far from everyone else as they could sensibly place her parents without arousing suspicion. 

Crux swears, standing and kicking at a pile of blankets that luckily do not have anyone inside.

“She’s making a break for it _now_?” Harrow asks, amid the groans of the nearest groups of cloisterites woken by the noise.

“Of course, she is,” Aiglamene comments, dryly.

Harrow’s great-aunt, Sister Aisamorta, says, “Let her try. Saves us the trouble of having to keep an eye on her in the future. Saves us the trouble of keeping her quiet. Saves us the resources of feeding her. She eats enough for eight nuns.”

Crux looks to Harrow and Harrow shakes her head. She’s not going to let Griddle actually freeze to death on her watch. Freeze nearly to death? Sure. But actually freeze to death is not happening. Harrow’s not taking that on in addition to everything else. Harrow’s not losing a single soul on the Ninth tonight.

“Going,” Crux grunts. 

Aiglamene raises her eyebrows at Harrow. Yeah, yeah, there was every chance the Marshal might try to finish the job himself. _Try_. Harrow’s thrown enough skeletons at Gideon Nav to know what she can take, and Gideon can definitely take Crux. 

If Gideon does take on Crux, then someone else is going to have to go out there to retrieve her and whatever is left of their Marshal, and that someone will undoubtedly be Harrow and her bone army anyway, so she might as well suck it up and join him now. 

“I’m coming with you,” Harrow announces at the last moment. She pushes off her pile of blankets and stands, wrapping her robe tight around her and convulsing a little with the sudden draft.

They’re almost to the doors of Drearburh when the doors of Drearburh push in and Gideon stumbles inside.

Harrow stops short. Crux walks right into her and then jumps back, mumbling apologies while trying to save face in front of a shivering Gideon Nav.

“Oh,” Gideon says, surprised. “You two were coming to collect me?”

She’s wrapped in three church robes and her breath puffs white when she speaks.

“You insolent mongrel,” Crux growls. “You mutinous scoundrel -- “

Harrow waits patiently for Crux to finish his tirade. 

“Very poetic,” Gideon cuts in. “Rhymes and everything. You’d fit right in on the Eighth. Or is it the Seventh that’s into all that poetry?”

“I’m surprised, Griddle,” Harrow says, ignoring the rest of whatever Gideon is blathering about. “You’ve decided to be sensible for once.”

“Oh, fuck off Nonagesimus.”

Crux moves forward, baton in hand, ready to put Gideon in her place, but Harrow sets a hand on his arm. It’s late, and it’s really easier for Harrow to deal with Gideon herself. 

“You’ll get yours in the end, Nav,” Crux spits.

“Great,” Gideon says. “Looking forward to that.” Her teeth are chattering. Harrow grabs the blanket from Crux and tosses it at Gideon’s feet. In response, Gideon glares daggers at Harrow, which seems pretty disproportionate to Harrow considerately tossing her a fucking blanket. 

“We thought you were trying another one of your escape plans,” Harrow admits.

Gideon’s whole body shakes with the chattering of her teeth. She throws up her hands in anger. “Yeah, I was! Come off it, Harrowhark. I know you shut off the heat on purpose to keep me stuck here.”

Oh. Well, _that’s_ news to Harrow.

“Watch your filthy traitorous mouth,” Crux warns, his tone rising, angry and beyond over the top for the situation. 

“You can go back to the hall, Marshal,” Harrow announces. “Get some rest. I’ll make sure Nav returns with me.”

Crux pauses, clearly unhappy with this order. The fact that Gideon is smiling broadly at him is not helping, though her teeth knocking together do mar the overall effect.

Finally, Crux nods to Harrow, turns, and stomps away. Gideon flips him off as soon as his back is turned.

Once Crux is out of sight and Gideon turns her attention back to Harrow, Harrow smiles. “Griddle. You really think I broke generators and risked the lives of my entire House for you?”

“Yeah, I actually do think you might. You’re _that_ crazy bitch.”

“You don’t know me at all,” Harrow concludes. 

Gideon picks up the blanket that Harrow tossed at her feet and wraps it around herself.

“You know, if we lived on the Second, like sensible people, we could just start a fire,” Gideon points out. “They look very pleasant in illustrations. Then again, if we lived on the Second like sensible people, it wouldn’t get so fucking cold in the first place.”

Harrow ignores this -- she’s heard enough about the Second as told by Gideon Nav’s comic book collection to write an entire novel. She starts walking toward the lower hall, pauses to make sure that Gideon is following. 

Gideon sighs heavily, but she does follow Harrow, which is something. No need for the skeleton escort. 

As they navigate the halls, the chill seeps through Harrow’s robe and her blanket, up from the floor into her feet. Her teeth begin to chatter, clacking in concert with Gideon’s. It’s a very Ninth chorus, reminiscent of the clicking of knuckle bones, prayers, and the Tomb.

The lower hall actually does feel a few degrees warmer due to the crowd of people stuffed within. It also smells a little stale and a lot just really old and somewhat sweaty. All very Ninth smells. Even so, Gideon scrunches up her face immediately and Harrow is tempted to do the same, but manages to control all of her facial muscles except for the few jaw muscles that are busy knocking her teeth around.

Harrow gestures to the empty space beside Crux and Gideon reaches out to push at her shoulder, a clear rejection of Harrow’s silent suggestion. There’s space beside Ortus, and Gideon eyes that space and then makes a clearly visible decision to ignore it, following Harrow toward the corner where Harrow’s stashed her parents instead. 

Harrow points to the place beside her parents and Gideon’s eyes widen and she shakes her head emphatically. “I’m going back out there. Yeah, no. I’d rather freeze to death.”

Gideon is never going to get over that _one_ time. 

“Fine,” Harrow says, and focuses on shift things to accommodate Gideon’s issues. Her parents sit up, scoot themselves over, moving closer to the wall and further away from the rest of the makeshift beds. They settle back down into sleep simultaneously. They’re still close enough that Harrow can keep an eye on them, but far enough away that they aren’t within reach. She pushes her own blankets away from Aiglamane, creating space there for another person. This seems to satisfy Gideon. 

Harrow grabs the pile of blankets that Crux kicked earlier, pushes them toward Gideon, and then settles back into her own pile. She turns her back to Gideon, huddling into her blankets in an attempt to warm herself and to get her teeth to stop dancing. Her jaw aches and the shivering has started to radiate through the rest of her body, the cold settling in her bones. 

Beside her, Gideon tosses around, trying to get comfortable. Harrow tries to ignore it, but trying to sleep next to Gideon is a lot different than sleeping next to Aiglamene. Aiglamene lies down and goes absolutely still, barely makes a sound. Even her breathing is quiet. 

Gideon has done nothing but move since she arrived.

Harrow, for her part, can’t seem to warm herself back up. She clenches her jaw together, refuses to listen to her teeth any more, but her body is still shaking and that’s harder to command, harder to still. 

Gideon shifts closer, close enough that Harrow can just feel Gideon’s body pressing warm against her own back. She stiffens, and then shakes with another wave of chills. 

“Harrow,” Gideon whispers, way too close to Harrow’s ear. And then Gideon’s hands are grabbing at Harrow’s blankets, pulling Harrow back against her. Her arm slithers under Harrow’s blankets to drape over Harrow’s body, pulling her even closer. Harrow’s frozen, even as heat rushes to her face, as her heart accelerate. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Harrow whispers, a hiss low enough not to alert anyone sleeping nearby. She pushes at Gideon’s arm, twists so that she can glare at Gideon’s big dumb face in the shadows of the hall.

“You’re still shivering,” Gideon says, as if that’s an answer to Harrow’s question. She’s close enough that Harrow can feel shuddering puffs of warm breath against her face when Gideon speaks. 

“It’s not _that_ cold,” Harrow snaps, her voice still carefully low. The entire House does not need to be alerted to this. 

“Yeah, well, I don’t care if _you_ freeze to death -- “

“I won’t.”

“-- but I’m certainly not freezing to death now. If I was going to do that I would have stayed in my room cuddled up to my closest friend.”

“Your sword? Griddle -- You won’t freeze to death. No one is freezing to death in here. Get off me.” Harrow rolls over so she’s facing Gideon. She starts pushing her away, but Gideon resists, grabs at Harrow’s arms to still her flailing. 

Aiglamene sighs from somewhere behind Gideon’s broad shoulders and it sounds extremely heavy and exasperated. Both girls freeze in response, eyeing each other like they used to when they were children and about to get caught exactly where they weren’t supposed to be. Harrow squeezes her eyes shut, mortified that Aiglamene’s awake and listening to this bickering, that it’s happening in front of her entire House.

“Only until your teeth stop chattering,” Harrow concedes, her voice so low that she feels Gideon lean in closer to hear her. Harrow’s completely flustered now, flushed and warm, eyes still stubbornly shut, and her jaw blessedly still. “And don’t make it weird. We never speak of it. Ever. No jokes, no barbed retorts, nothing about it ever again.”

“Nothing about what?” Gideon asks, and Harrow opens one eye to make sure that Gideon is saying that in agreement and not because she can’t hear Harrow. The glint in Gideon’s eye suggests that yes, she heard, she understands, and she is game. Harrow nods, but it isn’t needed -- Gideon’s already pulling Harrow back in toward her and Harrow quickly flips back onto her other side, can’t bear even the thought of her face pressed to Gideon’s shoulder or chest right now. Gideon’s arm is a warm weight across Harrow’s waist and her body sears against Harrow’s back. 

Gideon’s teeth chatter in Harrow’s ear for a few more minutes, and then slow, and then still.

Neither of them acknowledges that time they’ve agreed upon is up. Harrow is afraid to move, afraid what will happen if she does, afraid she’ll burst into a flaming ball of embarrassment, that she’ll pull an army of skeletons from every bone in the room just to chase Griddle away. And also -- this is the warmest she’s felt all day, all night. The warmest Harrow’s felt in a very long time. It’s horribly predictable, atrociously mortifying, extremely un-Ninth. 

Harrow prays to the Tomb in an attempt to relax. When she gets to _I pray it sleeps_, she repeats the line, again and again, a soothing mantra. 

Gideon’s breathing begins to slow and her arm relaxes, hand curling softly against Harrow’s stomach. Harrow’s heart jumps and she bites her lip to distract herself, consciously relaxes her toes, then her feet, then her ankles, up and up until she loses focus somewhere around her middle and has to start again.

Toes.

_I pray it sleeps._

Feet.

_ I pray it sleeps._

Ankles.

_I pray it sleeps._


	4. Eighteen

Harrowhark Nonagesimus is nearing her eighteenth birthday when she receives the invitation from the Emperor and travels to Canaan House with her horribly inappropriate, debatably capable and frustratingly reluctant cavalier in tow. By the time her birthday arrives, Abigail Pent is dead along with Magnus the Fifth, Isaac Tettares and Jeannemary the Fourth. 

She won’t count Protesilaus the Seventh. He was most definitely dead on arrival. 

Harrow’s never been a fan of birthdays, particularly her own, so the fact that this one passes unnoticed by anyone, most especially herself, is a blessing. She doesn’t remember it at all until she wakes up in the early hours of the morning to the soft sounds of Gideon snoring in the small cavalier’s bed set perpendicular to her own, and by then it’s already three days past. 

A birthday is a heavy reminder of why Harrow is here, her purpose, the sacrifice that the Ninth made to produce its final necromancer. Since her parents died, Harrow’s chosen to spend each of her birthdays within the Locked Tomb, hiding from anyone who might make note of the date, who might acknowledge it in any way. It’s a cold and lonely way to spend a day that would be celebrated with cake and candles on the Third or the Fifth or the Seventh. It’s actually pretty typical for the Ninth, the Tomb notwithstanding. 

Harrow’s not even sure the date of Gideon’s birthday. It never seemed important; she never thought to ask. Gideon’s older than her by nearly a year, and there’s a span of a couple months, starting now, when they’re the same age in number. That’s always seemed a sufficient amount of information, because the truly important thing was always that Gideon and Harrow were alive and there were two hundred others just like them who were not.

Alive for now. Alive for this moment. Hard to guess what the day will bring. Everything feels like it’s speeding up, spinning toward some final moment where Harrow will either ascend to Lyctorhood or fail miserably -- and if she fails --

Harrow needs to focus on what’s at hand. She needs to talk to Sextus. She needs to talk to him about the Third, and they need to pool their resources. They need to get to the bottom of everything, of Canaan House, of the murders. If she’s to be Lyctor -- if she’s to be a Lyctor _soon_ \-- there is no time to waste. It’s essential if they’re to ensure that the deaths of the Fourth and the Fifth be worth anything, for the deaths that came before they ever arrived at Canaan House to mean something.

And just yesterday Harrow’s cavalier held Harrow’s face in her hands and pressed cool wet lips to Harrow’s forehead and all Harrow can think now is:

_Happy Fucking Birthday to Me_. 

She remembers Gideon’s hand, that kiss, and her body hums and her brain spins and her hands itch for the press of Gideon’s palm against hers, for that new comfort, that unfathomable intimacy.

But there’s no time. There’s no time to get weird about this. There’s no time to think about the fact that this is even _possible_, that after every terrible thing that Harrow has done to Gideon over the course of their entire lives, every horrible thing -- every injury, every cutting word, dead hands around a child’s neck -- Gideon still has the capacity to hold Harrow the way she did in that pool, to _look_ at Harrow like -- like -- 

There’s no time at all. They spent the entire afternoon and evening on this already, spent it on each other while the Third were out there working, and the Sixth, and the Eighth --

That’s enough to get Harrow up and moving, enough to get her into the bathroom, teeth brushed, hair combed, face painted. It’s enough to get her dressed, and it’s enough to get her standing over Gideon’s prone form, ready to wake her, ready to force her cavalier into another dangerous day.

Gideon’s still snoring, which any other day would frustrate Harrow, enrage her, have her spitting out every insult in the book. Instead Harrow feels a sickening heavy fondness, a terrifying warmth, a dense and despicable yearning. The snores come rhythmically, steady, with no hitches or starts. Gideon hasn’t slept so soundly since they arrived at Canaan House, at least not that Harrow’s observed, and Harrow’s spent most of her time in these rooms with Gideon asleep on the floor, her body twitching, her lips mumbling words Harrow couldn’t understand, though not for lack of trying. There was a night early on when Harrow sat there and listened for an hour, curious to know if Gideon was dreaming of anything that could help Harrow with her trials, with the layout of the House. Harrow thought she heard her name once, a couple of curses, and nothing else that made any sense at all.

Yesterday, Gideon wanted Harrow to think that she was about to kiss her. Now Harrow studies Gideon’s face, pale orange lashes against tan cheeks, rough red patches where the face paint has irritated her skin. Gideon’s on her side, facing Harrow’s bed, her fingers brushing the edge of the mattress, socked feet sticking out from beneath the thick blanket. Her mouth is slack, lips parted, and she’s drooling slightly onto her pillow. The same old Griddle that drooled on Harrow’s pillow when they were bickering children. 

Harrow should let Gideon sleep, she should simply leave Gideon a note telling her where she can find Harrow once she wakes. 

She doesn’t want to leave Gideon’s side. She doesn’t want to chance a reversion back to the way things are supposed to be. She isn’t ready to lose what they’ve started, and she knows all too well now how many different ways there are to lose someone in Canaan House.

Harrow checks the time. The First runs on a twenty-four hour clock, the day split in half with each half numbering twelve hours. It’s the first fourth hour of the day. It’s still very early. She has time to let Gideon sleep, at least another hour. Griddle deserves that. 

Harrow pulls her journal from her robe, intent on reviewing her notes, seeing if there’s anything that she’s missed, anything that reads differently now that circumstances have changed since the time they were written. She climbs back onto the bed and stretches out parallel to her sleeping cavalier.

She opens to the page of notes she wrote while they were in the Second laboratory, but she barely begins to read before she’s distracted again by Gideon sleeping beside her, by the memory of Gideon’s mouth pressed to her forehead, Gideon’s hands exploring her face. Gideon leaning in with bright eyes and parted lips. That was intentional, a tease. It had to be. And the words that came after were the exact sort of words that Gideon always threw at Harrow, the same deflections, just with new information incorporated this time. But the way she looked at Harrow, the way she leaned in, their hands clasped -- that wasn’t intended to push Harrow away. It’s -- It’s a distraction, it’s a complication, beguilement. Harrow wants to believe all of that, but it’s also -- 

She reaches out a hand and presses two fingers against the soft flesh between Gideon’s finger and thumb. Slowly, carefully, she slides her hand closer until her fingers are inside Gideon’s curled hand, pressed against Gideon’s palm. Harrow closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

Gideon Nav is supposed to step in as Harrow’s cavalier primary, do this one last thing for her Reverend Daughter, and then her life is finally her own. Harrow was willing to keep her word this one time, despite her aunts’ warnings. Do this, and Gideon is free and it’ll be okay. Harrow won’t be alone because she’ll be a Lyctor. Her House will be rejuvenated. Everything will have been worth it and no one will have to make a decision as heinous as killing two hundred to save them all for at least another myriad. Harrow will be there to make sure of that. 

Harrow had made her peace with all of this. She was ready to let Gideon go. 

Can she still do it? Or will she devise some reason to bind Nav back to the Ninth when this is over, to keep Gideon selfishly by her side?

It’ll destroy everything if she does that. There’s no point. There’s no point keeping Griddle with her if it means they’ll never get back to this, this genuine comfort in each other’s company, Gideon’s hand holding hers, those startling amber eyes --

The snoring stops and Gideon’s body jerks awake beside her, their hands falling away from each other. Harrow yanks her arm back in, away from Gideon, places it on her journal. It’s shaking, just a little, and she grips the book to still herself. 

“Fuck,” Gideon chokes beside her, her voice hoarse with sleep. “Oh. It’s you.”

Harrow clears her throat. And then, nervously clears it again.

“We need to get moving,” she says, a little harder than she means to.

Gideon’s expression shutters, closing down for just a moment, and Harrow can’t believe she’s messed this up so soon, absolutely immediately. 

“No, I - “ she starts, and then trails off, unsure what to say to fix it, unsure what to say that won’t sound wildly out of character, won’t immediately make this awkward and weird. 

That stumbled non-starter of a statement seems to do the trick anyway, because Gideon visibly relaxes again. 

“Okay,” Gideon says, and the only word Harrow’s brain can come up with for what Gideon’s doing is _gazing_ at Harrow. Oh God. “Yeah. You’re right.”

Neither of them make a move to get up, though Gideon does push her blankets down, and then stretches, groaning as her hands push up past her head, up beyond the head of her bed. Her shirt pulls up with the stretch, exposing a line of bronze skin above her trousers, lower than they should be on her hips, a dusting of pale hair visible on her stomach. 

When Gideon catches Harrow looking, her lips quirk up at the ends and she winks. 

“Don’t make this weird,” Harrow warns even as her heart is shouting, shrieking, to please please make this weird.

“Right,” Gideon agrees. “I just woke up to find that I’ve had a painted shadow imp crouched over me while I sleep, and I’m the weird one?”

“I’m not crouched -- Gideon, shut up.”

That somehow works, though it never has before. Gideon presses her lips tight, clearly doing her very best not to make this weirder than it already is now that Harrow’s pronounced it weird. There’s a light, a warmth in Gideon’s gaze that Harrow doesn’t remember ever seeing before. What is Harrow going to do with that warmth directed at her? How will she ruin it? How will she smother it? Will they even have a chance to find out before whatever got the Fourth catches up with them too?

Gideon reaches out and places her hand over Harrow’s hand that’s still gripping her book. Harrow’s throat makes a high pitched pathetic little noise without Harrow’s permission, a complete betrayal. 

Gideon, at least, is still quiet. That vow of silence was good for something.

Harrow reminds herself that this isn’t new territory. They did this just last night, holding hands at the edge of the pool. She survived that, she can survive this now too. 

And then Gideon swipes her thumb, smooth and slow, back and forth over the top of Harrow’s hand and all the nerves in Harrow’s body light up. Oh God. Okay. Harrow jerks her hand back, burned. Gideon doesn’t protest, doesn’t say anything, but she’s still watching Harrow and she’s still smiling a little.

They lie there for a long time like that. Harrow’s face is freshly painted, Gideon’s still bare and puffy with sleep. Harrow wishes she hadn’t reapplied the paint, wishes they were on the same footing, but it’s too late for that too and maybe it’d be too much. Maybe it’s better this way, this last bit of safety, of distance between them. If they don’t make it out of this --

“If we don’t make it out of this -- “ 

“Oh, no, don’t,” Gideon begs and now her hand grabs for Harrow’s again, squeezing it tight. “Don’t make me promise that again. I’ve already agreed to keep an eye on your girl.”

“No,” Harrow says, eyes narrowed slightly at Gideon’s words, unused to knowledge of the Tomb from anyone else’s lips. “Not that, I -- “

“I think we should make this weird,” Gideon cuts in, her voice and the words exploding across Harrow’s brain like pictures of ancient fireworks, like the explosion of bone when it hits a blade. 

“What?” Harrow sputters, momentarily blinded. “No!”

“Okay, hear me out -- I really need to piss and brush my teeth, and then I’m going to come back and I’m going to make my case.”

“There’s no case to be made!” Harrow insists, and she sounds hysterical, a little unhinged. “There’s no case for making things weird at a time like this, you -- you _weirdo_! (“Good one,” Gideon inserts, fully awake now.) You need to get dressed. We should already be knocking on the Sixth’s door. If Sextus gets ahead of us because we’re in here _getting weird_ \--”

“Hold on. Are you -- Harrow, are you using ‘getting weird’ as a euphemism for sex?” Gideon accuses, eyes wide, face a little flushed, which is -- Harrow doesn’t know what to do with any of this.

“No! Are you?!” She shuts her eyes and carefully presses her fingers to the lids. She badly wants to rub them, but doesn’t want to fix her paint afterward. They do not have time for any of this. “We don’t have time for any of this, regardless of what euphemisms we’re using.”

“The Sixth will wait,” Gideon promises. Her blanket is all the way off now and she stands, hiking up her trousers to a more appropriate level. “They’re very patient. Have you noticed that?”

“No!” Harrow protests. She snaps her journal shut and sits up to glare at Gideon. “Patient! Nav, Sextus finished _all_ of the trials. All but siphoning. That’s not patience, that’s tenacity, that’s --”

“Wait,” Gideon says, cutting Harrow off again mid-sentence. Her hands fly out, palms out toward Harrow as though Harrow is about to step into a loaded landmine or trip and plummet off the edge of a cliff -- and prior to yesterday, that likely would have received a much different reaction from Gideon Nav. “Harrow, you crazy batshit loon, _please_ just slow down for a fraction of a second, wait for me for just a minute. Promise me you will wait right here and you won’t move a muscle.”

Gideon’s the one sounding a little hysterical now, and somehow that calms Harrow, just a bit. She smooths her robes, takes a deep breath, and nods. “Three minutes, Nav. Three.”

Gideon is gone before Harrow finishes that second ‘three’ and Harrow is left alone with a promise that she won’t move and a brain spinning with _euphemisms_ and that glimpse, that dusting of hair on Gideon’s stomach. She’s left with an entire lifetime of knowing Gideon Nav and less than a full day of really wanting to _know_ her. She’s left with a job to finish and no time for this interlude. It’s past the fifth hour now and they should be up, they should be in the thick of it. There isn’t much time left.

Harrow lays back on the bed, watches the clock and contemplates sending a skeleton into the bathroom after Gideon. She reaches into her pocket and tosses a knucklebone to the floor, pulls up the construct in preparation. Gideon’s back within two minutes, before the skeleton makes it out of the bedroom door. She looks the bone construct up and down, and then turns her attention back to Harrow.

“Who invited this guy?”

“Your face,” Harrow starts, ignoring Gideon’s question because Gideon is back within three minutes, but she isn’t dressed and her face is still completely bare.

“I know,” Gideon says. She pushes past the skeleton and climbs onto Harrow’s bed, close enough that Harrow shrinks back and freezes trying to anticipate Gideon’s next move.

Gideon doesn’t touch her, just settles onto the bed beside Harrow, her head propped up on one arm so that she can look down at Harrow’s face.

When Gideon doesn’t do anything else, Harrow says, “Well? State your case. You’re just making this weird in a different way now, and I’m here anxiously waiting with bated breath.” She means it sarcastically, but honestly… yeah.

“Sure, okay good,” Gideon says, awkwardly. She licks her lips, and she’s looking right at Harrow’s mouth, and Harrow panics, suddenly making the connection that Gideon’s case must involve a demonstration. 

She starts to sit up, but Gideon can be fast when she’s motivated, and she presses a firm hand to Harrow’s chest. Harrow falls back to the bed with little resistance. Her eyes feel wide and dry, like she hasn’t blinked in days. Her limbs are frozen and her heart hammering. Gideon must feel that, must feel Harrow’s heart against her palm, and that makes it somehow a little better and it makes it so much worse. 

She looks up at Gideon’s entire stupid face, the same face that Harrow has cursed and hated and hurt, the one face that Harrow knows better than any other in the entire universe. Gideon’s is the only face that Harrow truly saw for _years_, unpainted and naked. Everyone else that Harrow knew was hidden behind their penitence, their piousness, behind their robes and painted masks. The only other face that could even come close for Harrow is that of a girl frozen and locked in a Tomb, but even she cannot truly compare. The girl is still as a statue, carved of stone, whereas Gideon’s face has always been alive with movement, with too many infuriating feelings, bursting with life.

Gideon’s hair is sticking up in every direction, that un-Ninth and completely inappropriate shade of red. Her mouth always looks ready to smile even when she’s having an absolutely miserable time, but she isn’t having a miserable time now. Gideon’s dazzling, hot and bright, and this time when she finally leans in, she doesn’t do it with an intention to deflect, she doesn’t try to brush it off with a joke or a jab. 

Harrow’s heart races and then stops entirely when Gideon’s lips find hers. Harrow dies and she’s resurrected, reborn, awakened by Gideon’s kiss like in the strange and ancient fairytales her mother used to recite to Harrow as a child. Harrow lets go and gives in.

Her forgotten construct clatters to the floor in a pile of discarded bone. Gideon jerks away, hand reaching for a sword that isn’t there, ready to defend. 

“Don’t,” Harrow gasps. “No, that was just me.” Her hands fumble up to find Gideon’s face, guiding Gideon back. 

Gideon manages to say, “Thank God you uninvited that pervert,” and then they meet again and Harrow kisses Gideon’s smile, her teeth, her cheeks and her nose, and finally her mouth again. 

Gideon is there and ready to welcome Harrow’s shaking lips. She drips kisses onto Harrow’s mouth and swallows Harrow’s gasp, and when she finally pulls away, Harrow’s not the only one shaking. She’s not the only one that looks remade, brand new.

_Happy Fucking Birthday to me_, Harrow thinks, though she can’t (and won’t) say something so stupid and inappropriate out loud, not even to ease the tension, not even to make Gideon laugh. 

“I think this might keep being weird for a while,” Gideon concludes after a long moment accompanied only by a chorus of heavy breathing.

Harrow is still caged between the bed and Gideon’s strong arms, looking up at Gideon’s waiting face. Gideon's mouth is smeared with white paint. There are splotches of it on her cheek and her nose.

“It’s late,” Harrow says. She’s trying to find some semblance of sense in all of this. Some way to pull it back, to remind them both that Harrow’s a _horror_, that Gideon deserves better, but when Gideon’s face falters, Harrow shakes her head, sets a careful hand on Gideon’s arm. “You make a fucking good case for making things weird. And if this was any other moment -- ”

“I know. I know. The Sixth is waiting, time’s running out, death is imminent.”

“Unfortunately,” Harrow agrees. Gideon stands and Harrow feels cold, alone and bereft. When Gideon holds out a hand, Harrow takes it, lets Gideon help her to her feet.

“But when time’s _not_ running out, and death isn’t imminent, and we no longer need to care about the Sixth --”

“Then I think we’ll have to revisit… your case.”

“For making things weird,” Gideon finishes. 

“Yes.”

Gideon nods, can’t seem to help her smile. “All right. Come on, my miniature necro-goddess. Come help me with my face.”

“Nav --” Harrow protests, but she's protesting the ridiculous name, not Gideon's request. Harrow will gladly help Gideon paint her face. It means that it’ll be done correctly for once.

“My pint-sized Lady of Darkness,” Gideon adds from halfway across the larger sitting room, turning back toward Harrow, to see if she’s following. Harrow’s close behind her.

“This is the bad kind of making it weird now,” Harrow warns. In the bathroom she picks up the paint and pushes Gideon to sit.

“Got it,” Gideon agrees. She sits heavily, knees spread wide to give Harrow room to get close. “My necromancer.”

“That one isn’t so bad,” Harrow admits.

Gideon closes her eyes and Harrow gets to work.


	5. Twenty-Five

Harrowhark Nonagesimus -- Harrow the First, Necrosaint, the Hand of the Emperor, Harrow the Ninth -- returns to the Ninth House with an absence of fanfair, no cheers and no tears, no welcome home prayer party. She is twenty-five years old.

She arrives long before the sounding of the First Bell and the House is quiet, fast asleep. Harrow steps onto the landing field flanked by Camilla Hect and Coronabeth Tridentarius, all three draped in black robes, faces painted to blend in, though Harrow is fairly certain they will not encounter any threats. 

The Ninth is dying, older by the second, it’s remaining youth lost and gone six years. The Ninth has no heir, it has no hope, and the Emperor lies.

All those years of worrying that the King Undying would turn the Ninth into an extension of another House if He found out their situation, their numbers, and it turned out He was more than happy to sit back and watch the Ninth die out entirely. He plucked Harrow and Gideon off the Ninth, mashed them together into his Hand, placed them under His control. There is nothing left on the Ninth that He needs, nothing He ever wants to see again. 

Harrow’s counting on that. She’s ensured Camilla in every way imaginable, but Cam is still a cavalier without a necromancer, and a Ninth Lyctor who won’t listen to reason is a poor substitute for a lost necromancer of the Sixth. Camilla Hect is nothing if not persistent, however, and there’s no chasing her off now that Harrow’s retrieved Camilla and Corona from the First. Here they all are. Black vestals with polished swords strapped to their backs. Mattias Nonius come again. The late great Gideon Nav returned.

Cam and Corona are anxious and ready for action, though there is no one to fight other than the few remaining geriatric cloisterites and their skeletal companions.

Harrow leads them down from the landing field, down flight after flight of pitch black stairs. Camilla and Corona pull hand torches from their pockets, cursing occasionally at the unevenness of the steps. Harrow no longer needs light to see and could do these stairs in the dark even before she ascended to Lyctor. 

Seventeen flights down from the landing field, Harrow stops. Her brain and her body stall and Camilla and Corona stumble to a halt behind her.

“What is it?” Corona whispers. She’s so close to Harrow’s ear that Harrow has to resist the urge to swat her away. 

By the time Harrow made it back to the First, Cam and Corona had been on their own, fighting for their lives, for five full years. Five years is a long time when you’re mortal trapped in a House of death, of vengeance. Corona is still tall and bright, but she has a long scar down her face, more on her arms, and she now moves with a rapier as though it’s an extension of herself. Cam is largely the same, with a few new scars and someone new to look after. She stands beside Corona, equals.

“Keep going,” Harrow says. “Five more flights and you’ll reach the catacombs. Six more from there and you’ll hit the corridors that lead to the Tomb. You have the map?”

“I have it,” Camilla says. She pats the pocket of her robe.

“We’re splitting up?” Corona asks, concerned. 

“Once you reach the Tomb, the next set of stairs will bring you up into the heart of Drearburh. No one routinely goes down to the corridors that house the Tomb, particularly in the middle of the night, but check these stairs to make sure you’re absolutely alone.”

“I don’t think we should split up,” Corona says, her beautiful soft mouth turned down into a pouty little frown. Harrow catches herself thinking about pressing a kiss to those lips. One of the unanticipated ‘perks’ of Lyctorhood: intrusive thoughts direct from your perverted cavalier. Harrow was never so _physical_ before Gideon forced herself underneath Harrow’s skin. 

“There’s something I need to do and I need to do it alone,” Harrow says, eyes hard and focused on Camilla.

Cam doesn’t say anything, but her expression is easy to read. She doesn’t like this any more than Corona does. Cam is a cavalier born and raised. 

She studies Harrow’s face, trying to piece something together through the layers of paint, through the eyes that could be amber gold or a brown so dark they might as well be black. Harrow’s fairly certain they’re gold. She can feel Gideon bubbling up within her, burning so hot she’s boiling, like she might pour right out if Harrow opens her mouth and bends over. 

Harrow takes three deep breaths, wills her blood to cool. 

Eventually it works and Cam seems to decide she’s satisfied with whatever it is that she sees. She turns to Corona and nods once. Corona stares back at Camilla, a slight shake to her head. They go on like this for another moment, a silent conversation bathed in torchlight. Harrow tries not to contemplate their closeness, the sparks that pass between them now. Gideon’s soul _delights_ if she spends even a second thinking on what it must have been like, five years of life or death odds, one ally, all that time together and alone. Harrow spends as little time dwelling on the inner workings of Cam and Corona as possible, disgusted by her body’s reaction, the jealousy rising in her throat.

“Okay,” Corona sighs, finally.

Camilla presses a hand to Harrow’s shoulder, squeezes tight, and says, “Don’t be long. This place feels worse than the Facility on the First.”

“It isn’t.”

“I know, believe me. But knowing doesn’t change how it feels.” 

“It’s impressively dark,” Corona adds. “I’ve never been anywhere so intensely shadowed, and I’ve been just about everywhere now.” At least a small percentage of Corona’s insistence on coming with Harrow was a desire to finally see the one House she’s never been allowed to visit before. 

“Yes,” Harrow agrees with a roll of the eyes. “We’re deliciously dreary.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Cam says.

“Turn on your communicators.”

Camilla hesitates. “They’ll be listening. They’ll track us.”

“They won’t get here in time,” Harrow promises. Camilla and Corona carefully press their fingers to their ears, turning on the earpieces that Harrow stole from the Mithraeum years ago. The ancient technology feels out-of-place, otherworldly, amid the decadent decay of the Ninth. Harrow presses her finger to her own ear and hears the soft sound of static as the transmitter is activated.

Harrow nods and then steps aside to let her companions pass. She watches as Camilla and Corona continue down, the soft lights from their torches bobbing with each step until Harrow is left on the landing, shrouded in darkness, alone with her cavalier.

She leaves the staircase, slips silently down the corridor until she’s standing in front of a locked door. She pulls a bone stud from her ear, slips it through the keyhole. A skeletal hand opens the door. It waves her in and Harrow smiles slightly at this quirk, at this hint of personality in her creation.

The room looks like it’s been locked tight since the day they left. Everything is neat, tidy, and coated in a thick layer of Ninth dust. 

Gideon made her bed that last morning before they left for the First. Harrow honestly doesn’t remember if she made her own. Probably not. Most likely she left it to be taken care of by the skeletons.

Harrow pulls the blanket back, the sheet beneath, and then she sits on the edge, feels the stiff mattress compress just slightly with her weight. The area beneath the bed is stacked high with papers and magazines. Harrow reaches down and pulls one out. _Nastiest Necromancers of the Nine_. 

Lovely, Griddle. That’s just lovely. 

She sets the magazine on the table beside Gideon’s bed, and then she can no longer help herself. She turns and she presses her face directly into Gideon’s pillow, breathing in deep, trying to turn back a clock that refuses to stop, refuses to reverse, no matter how often and how long Harrow begs, no matter how fervently she prays.

She imagines she can still smell her cavalier, still smell the dust of her robes, the salt sweat of her skin, the warmth of her hair, and a touch of recyc from years of jogging in the leek fields. Maybe it’s actually there, maybe this bed really does still smell of Gideon Nav. Probably not. It’s a figment of Harrow’s imagination, one she’s entirely made up, because though she’s known Gideon her entire life, the number of times she’s been close enough to memorize a scent can be counted on two hands, maybe one if she’s being really honest with herself.

Gideon Nav smelled like everyone else on the Ninth, like bone dust and damp earth, and that touch of warmth that comes with being alive.

Harrow turns onto her back and stares up at the ceiling. She imagines Griddle here, leaning over her like she did on that very last morning on the First. The best and the worst day of Harrow’s life all wrapped up together, tied tight with leather made from human skin.

Harrow closes her eyes, thinks back to the pool and the bed and Gideon’s mouth touching Harrow’s, their bodies pressed together on a cold night in Drearburh, then in the salt water of a pool.

Arousal curls sharp and low in her gut, hot and sweet, a reminder that this is how it is now. This is how they comfort themselves alone in her room at night, nothing but memories and Harrow’s fingers dancing over her own skin, sliding, rubbing, shaking, and pressing into herself, pulling pleasure from her body and dedicating every ounce to Gideon. Gideon. _Gideon_.

If she had time now —

If she hadn’t brought Camilla, if Corona wasn’t here, Harrow would be tempted to stay awhile, to indulge some latent fantasies, to see where her hands might take her, here alone in Gideon’s cell. She remembers this room like it was her own, because of course, in a way it was. This cell’s former occupant _burns_ for Harrow and Harrow alone. She burns eternally, faithfully, warming and healing and holding Harrow, pushing her forward.

Harrow intends to repay that debt.

There’s a small cracked mirror beside Gideon’s bed. Harrow remembers forcing it on Gideon in preparation for their journey. 

“To check your face,” she’d said, shoving it into Gideon’s hands. She’s pushed too hard and the sharp edge sliced Griddle’s finger. 

Harrow imagines pressing that finger to her mouth and sucking Gideon dry.

Fuck, she needs —

She catches her reflection in the cracked glass of the mirror. Her face paint is smudged and smeared, and the sight does nothing to cool her blood or calm her heart. Instead it pulls up new memories, Gideon’s hands careful on her face that last day, her lips and her cheeks smudged white.

Camilla crackles to life in Harrow’s ear and Harrow sits up with a start.

“There are a few praying in the hall,” Cam says. 

He’s likely listening, piecing it all together. It doesn’t matter. By the time he arrives, it’ll be too late to change what Harrow’s about to do. 

“They’re very focused -- if you’re quiet no one will see you.”

“This is exactly what I always imagined the Ninth would be like,” Corona interjects.

“Except for Nav, you Niners really do stick close to the stereotype,” Camilla agrees.

“Thanks,” Harrow says. She doesn’t chastise them for giving away their location. Make it easy for Him. It won’t help.

“Anytime,” Camilla says and then the earpiece goes quiet.

Harrow takes one more look around the small cell, at the old practice sword gathering dust in the corner, at the stacks and stacks of comics and magazines under the narrow bed. 

One of Gideon’s old robes is hung on a hook by the door. Harrow presses the synthetic fabric to her cheek, crushes it between her body and the wall. With her cheek pressed against the concrete beneath, she smears paint on the black fabric, anoints it, desecrates it, leaves her mark. This too is hers, all of it. 

She wants to consume it all, everything in this world that’s left of Gideon Nav. If she can’t have her in the flesh, she will take all that’s left of her in any way that she can.

The things she might do here if she had more time, the things she might try with Gideon Nav fueling her thoughts and her urges. If she had more time she might -- imagine what might have —

She’s itching to expand, to take up _space_, and she lets herself go, allows herself a moment of unconfinement before she gets on with what she came here to do. He’ll be on his way now that they’ve spoken. She doesn’t have forever anymore. 

Harrow’s bones expand, pushing through skin as she shapes and forms them into sharp swords and points, needles and clubs. Shards of bone push out from her metacarpals, reminiscent of Gideon’s knuckleknives, and she scratches them against the concrete of the walls, a satisfying scrape. The bone pierces holes through her robes, spines from her back and her shoulders that extend until they hit the confines of the walls, until she can’t expand any further. She turns, scraping against the cell, bone chipping from her edges and falling to the floor. 

Harrow takes deep breaths, feels the pressure from her souls thin as they spread out into the extra space she’s created. She closes her eyes and takes stock. Gideon is deeper now, no longer boiling over, no longer threatening to burst forth. 

Harrow re-forms slowly, carefully, until she’s flesh again, all bone safely contained within the confines of her muscle and skin. 

She surveys the damage, the holes in her clothes, the fractured chair, the punctured mattress, the bone chips that fell from her spines. None of it matters. Gideon will never be confined to this sad little cell again and Harrow will never return once she’s completed what she came here to do.

“Okay,” Cam says, knocking Harrow out of her thoughts. “We’re here. There’s no one else on this entire tier.”

There never is. Harrow’s life might be a lot different if the door to the Tomb was located in the center of Drearburh instead of tucked deep inside, alone and unguarded, no one to watch ten-year-old Harrow slip inside. No one except Harrow’s literal other half.

“We’re alone for now. How long until that bell goes off?”

“We have time,” Harrow says, standing. “Wait for me.”

“Waiting.”

It’s time. She collects her bone fragments, places them in a small plastic bag and pushes them into her pocket. Once this is done, she leaves. 

She locks the door behind her, hides her destruction, though it’s a pointless gesture, all things considered. She backtracks to the stairs, down past the catacombs, rushing through the corridors until she’s there, standing in front of another familiar door. 

Corona and Camilla turn on her with a start, swords drawn. They breathe a collective sigh when they see that it’s just Harrow.

“Thanks for the warning,” Corona says. Sarcasm does not become her and Harrow ignores the comment. 

“Stay here,” she commands. All of the locks Harrow set on the door are still there, still intact and untouched. She removes them, opens the door, and steps inside. 

It all looks exactly the same. She breathes in the dust and the mold, the cold scent of decay, and she feels like she’s ten years old again. Her parents bodies are there, exactly where she left them, silent and still, unchanged. Harrow wonders how Aiglamene and Crux explained it. How they explained why Harrow’s parents never emerged, not even when Harrow did not return, not even after a year, or three, or five. Her parents must be assumed dead by now, finally, after all this time.

Harrow takes a moment to reach out, to touch their faces, to let them go. 

They crumble beneath her fingers, desiccated dust and bone that falls away with her touch.

Harrow approaches the rock, takes stock, and rolls it away. She knows these wards by heart, each bypass, each trick. It took her a year the first time. Then, with some practice, an hour, and now she’s to the pool in minutes. She dives in, fully clothed, and she feels cleansed.

The girl is there, still as stone, the same as she ever was. Chained and tethered. Breathtaking. Harrow saw her face that first time and instantly she decided to live forever in case this girl ever woke up.

Harrow has eternal life now and she’s tired of waiting. 

She pulls the bag of bone chips from her pockets, bones of her body, drops them into the holes where the chains disappear into the heart of the Ninth. And then Harrow begins her work, expanding, regenerating, pushing and cracking. 

_I pray it lives._

For the first time in her life, Harrow steps as close to the sleeping girl as she can get, and she reaches out, and she touches her. She presses her fingertips to the girl’s cold hands.

“Live,” she whispers. “It’s time.” 

She leans down, slow and careful. And then she closes her eyes and kisses frozen lips, and she feels that skin begin to warm against hers, feels as it softens from stone to flesh. She remembers Gideon Nav dripping kisses onto her lips, remembers how she felt brand new, reborn, remembers the strange fairytales her mother used to tell. They all went just like this. 

Harrow presses her palm to the back of a frozen hand and she feels it thaw beneath the heat of her skin. She touches the chains around the girl’s frozen neck and she feels them crack deep within the ground.

“It’s time,” Harrow says, mouth moving across each bit of exposed flesh, her lips leaving trails of warmth, of thaw, in their wake. And then --

The girl’s chest heaves. She takes a breath, so sudden that Harrow starts and stumbles away. The fingers tighten on the gleaming sword. Harrow takes another step back. She moves to stand at the edge of the monument, at the lip of the pool. She takes her own sword from her back, points it toward the throat of the girl, and she waits.

_I pray it lives._

Harrow’s bones continue to work at the chains and the room fills with the scream of metal, the snap and pop of fracturing rock. 

The girl takes one hand off her sword, releases it for the first time in ten thousand years. The hand falls from the edge of her pedestal, and the chains slip off her wrist. Her eyes are still closed. She flexes her fingers, testing their strength.

“It’s okay,” Harrow says, though it’s quite possibly the most ridiculously inadequate thing she’s ever said in her entire life. She holds tight to her sword, ready to run, to fight, to dive into the deep water of the pool. She’s ready for whatever comes next.

The girl is pushing herself up, sitting and groaning, and her voice sounds deliciously low and coarse. Broken chains fall from her body, clanging against the floor. She presses fingers to her neck, rubbing at the skin. And then she opens her eyes, and she looks down at her fallen restraints.

“Sister,” Corona gasps suddenly in Harrow’s ear, her voice overflowing with emotion before it’s cut through by static.

“Har-- “ Camilla’s voice comes through in pieces. “Ia -- ‘s -- here. Sh -- c--ing.”

Ianthe Tridentarius has arrived. Far too late.

It will take her too long to reach Harrow here, too long to figure out the blood ward bypass, the spells and the locks. He should have come Himself, but even He could not get to Harrow in time to stop her now.

The girl clears her throat, an entirely human sound, and Harrow snaps back to attention. 

Their eyes lock and time stops. 

Harrow always imagined her eyes would be yellow, Gideon’s gorgeous shade of amber, but this girl’s eyes are black, a rainbow oil slick like Harrow’s seen in only one other, in the sockets of the King Undying, the _Kindly_ Prince of Death.

_I pray she lives._

And then she stands, and Harrow knows that ‘girl’ is the wrong word for the creature before her. She is no more a girl than Harrow is now, no more a girl than the King Undying is a young boy and Harrow cannot believe she ever thought otherwise. She is taller than Harrow, the same perfect height as Gideon Nav and just as magnificent. Her skin gleams with warmth and life, her dark hair is cropped and it curls close to her scalp. She licks her lips as though tasting the kiss that Harrow left behind, considering it, and Harrow’s breath catches at that glimpse of pink tongue. 

All of her childhood dreams come true. All her young and lonely fantasies. All her plans coming to fruition. 

All her debts will be repaid.

Through her earpiece someone screams. She hardly hears it. 

Harrow kneels before Her.

She bows her head. 

She offers her sword.


	6. One Hundred and Thirty-Two

In the twenty-sixth year of the Second Rebirth -- the twentieth anniversary of the First House Rejuvenation -- Harrowhark Nonagesimus straps her sword to her back, removes nearly all of her ossified accoutrements, and returns to Canaan House. The Locked Tomb is open and empty, the Ninth fizzled out of existence, old and quiet and alone. The Second is dead and gone along with the Fourth and most of the Eighth and part of the Fifth. There is no God and all His Necrosaints are lost, all but one, who came here in order to unmake His last remaining work, to unmake herself.

Canaan House is slowly, endlessly, crumbling into the sea, but it still stands after everything, and Harrow can’t wait to destroy it once and for all. But first Harrow will retrieve what has been stolen. She knows now, absolutely, that it can be done.

She enters from the same landing deck where she knelt to pray all those years ago. The terrace is brittle, disintegrating bit by bit and crashing into the waves. Harrow treads lightly here. She doesn’t dally, travels down through the atrium, past the closed door of the room where Camilla and Corona once forged some semblance of a meaningful life, down through the unlocked Facility hatch, to the door that Cam once showed Harrow, the door that they uncovered but could never open. Harrow touched it once and knew how to get inside, knew exactly what she’d find there.

She left it locked. There were things that had to be done first, things she needed to be sure of before she returned. 

That was more than a century ago now. Harrow’s done her research. She knows what’s kept here under lock and ward. She knows what’s been buried and why. She knows where to find what she lost.

The Emperor lied about a lot and He lied about this. It can be undone.

The door opens to stairs and the stairs lead down, seven flights, eleven, sixteen. There are landings and there are doors and Harrow ignores them all, knows that what she is looking for will be deep, at the very bottom. Eighteen floors, twenty-five, and finally she reaches the base, the very last door. Harrow presses herself to the metal, smells a touch of putrefaction in the air leaking out from the seams, and she knows what she’ll find inside. She can feel it calling. 

She breaks the locks, destroys the wards, draws her sword and then kicks her way in.

The lights snap on, a buzzing drone, high pitched and so very old. It’s another laboratory, gleaming steel tables, blinking machinery, walls plastered in scraps of flimsy. It’s a large room, and half of it is consumed by a broad crescent of caged pedestals, twenty-four in total and twenty of them full. They’re all here -- all of them -- all dead, all in various stages of decay. All except one.

The body of Gideon Nav is propped upright on the pedestal, still and silent as the Tomb. 

Gideon looks just as she did the last time that Harrow saw her. Her church robe is gone, removed by Gideon before she shattered Harrow’s heart, her entire world, and Gideon’s sword is in Harrow’s hand, but beyond that, she’s exactly the same, right down to her scuffed black boots. Her hair’s a tuft of violently vibrant orange atop a surprisingly delicate and infuriatingly innocent face. That face used to drive Harrow mad. She used to scour her brain to devise ways to twist that face into a mask of hate, into her own reflection. And Harrow never fully succeeded, not even when Gideon thought she might have murdered the Seventh cavalier. Even when the words coming from Gideon’s mouth were dripping and seething with rage, with betrayal and pain, they never fully transformed that face. 

Gideon’s lips are thin and pulled up in a smile. Her eyes are closed and her face relaxed, eyelashes resting softly on bronze cheeks. There are still traces of paint and blood smeared across her skin, and it burns Harrow that those who placed her here hadn’t even bothered to address this small thing. They’d done the bare minimum. Patched her and closed her up, hooked her in, and then left her there with all the others. So many others, more than Harrow expected. None of their lights blink anymore. Their bodies are in various stages of decay, some of them all the way down to bone and scraps of rotting cloth Only Gideon remains, glowing with life. Harrowhark’s the only one to make it this far. 

Still -- Paint and blood aside, there has been no degeneration that Harrow can see, no loss of hard muscle or soft fat, no hair growth, no aging of the skin. Perfect stasis. There are holes torn into Gidoen’s shirt, into her trousers, holes large enough that Harrow can see the scars from where they worked on her before they left her here, closing her wounds, fixing her knee, tubes in her hand and three into her side. 

Harrow scans the machinery behind Gideon’s case. She presses one button, and then a second. Her third try gives her what she’s after, the whoosh of release as the metal bars keeping Gideon in place shift aside. Harrow steps within the space, reaches a hand up to touch Gideon’s cheek. Her skin feels cool, but not the coldness of death. She’s soft, pliant, and very much alive. She’s just -- empty. 

Harrow scans the room and locates a sink tucked against the far wall behind a row of decaying cavaliers. She picks up a cloth from a table, wets it, and then carefully wipes the dried blood and paint from Gideon’s skin, her fingers careful on Gideon’s jaw. 

Gideon looks exactly the same and Harrow -- she knows it’s the same for her. Harrow looks the same, but she feels _so_ fucking old.

There’s a chance, Harrow knows, that rejoining Gideon to her body will kill Harrow. There’s a chance that Harrow will shrivel and die at Gideon’s feet, rapid and advanced aging until all that’s left is a pile of bone dust. There’s a chance that the separation will destroy them both before the advanced aging even has a chance to set in.

Harrow doesn’t think any of that will happen. She doesn’t think that that’s the truth. Lies created by a God determined to keep His Hands in line. Harrow’s done the research, she spent two decades in the libraries of the Sixth, studying the theorems over and over before she was ready, before she came here to take this final step.

Harrow stands before Gideon, her face naked and raw. She’s exposed and she’s ready.

She cuts a finger on the edge of her sword and pushes the blood between Gideon’s lips, a smear of red on white teeth, a stain on her ruddy lower lip. That done, Harrow wipes her hand on her trousers and checks her finger. The wound is already gone.

And that’s it. The last time Harrow will ever use Gideon’s soul to regenerate herself. 

Harrow presses her body to Gideon’s, holds Gideon’s head in both of her hands, and begins the process of prying their souls apart. 

**

Her screams claw their way up through the tunnel of her throat, cutting and tearing their way past her lips, ripping her apart. Her soul clings to its twin, refuses to let go — mine, _mine_, a century together, conjoined and fused. One flesh. One flesh. And it hurts so much, and it hurts so good.

Her bones break and mend, her heart stops and shudders back to life. And through it all Harrow screams. 

She pulls back at her bony fingers, pries her claws from Gideon’s core. She feels herself beginning to tear, to shred, the pain a siren blasting, bursting, and she pushes, she shoves, she forces herself to kick Gideon away. 

_Oh, but she’s mine. Consumed and digested._

She ignores this, ignores her own claim, her hoarding clinging soul, and she pushes once more, and this time it’s far enough. She’s pushed far enough that there’s a pull from Gideon’s empty vessel, and her other soul scrabbles and shouts, rushing to fill the void, its old familiar home.

Harrow lets her go and the tear is red and ripping, white fire.

And she screams and she screams and they scream.

**

Harrowhark is one hundred and thirty-two years old when they finally meet again, face to face, at the start of the world. 

“Gideon?” she asks, her throat raw, sore. She pushes herself up from the floor, to her feet with her sword in her hand. There’s a chance this went wrong. There was always a chance that something else might return in Gideon’s place.

Her cavalier is awake and quiet, watching her with bright and unsettling eyes. 

Harrow raises up a hand to touch her own face. It feels the same, unchanged by the severing. She presses a hand to her chest and her heart beats fast, but it’s steady. She lifts the sword and her muscles work as they’ve been taught; they hold the sword, firm and unwavering. 

Gideon’s yellow eyes follow Harrow’s movements. Harrow remembers how those eyes appeared, looking back at Harrow from within her own face, like a lizard from the Sixth or a cat from the Third. The eyes suit Gideon far better than they ever did Harrow, but now, with her silence, the unsurety of Harrow’s success, they look cold even in the face of her cavalier, unnatural in a way they’ve never seemed to Harrow before.

“Gideon?” Harrow asks again, a high pitch creeping into to her voice that gives away her underlying fear. “Are you -- are you in there?“

There are so many other things that could find Gideon here, the space between Canaan House and the River is so thin, easily jumped. Bodies have never been safe in this place.

Gideon looks down at the tubes in her side, at the one in her hand, examines the spot where they enter the skin.

“You can pull them out now” Harrow offers. “Or I could do it for you.” She stays where she is. Doesn’t step closer to make good on her words.

It doesn’t matter. Gideon doesn’t need her help. She pulls the tube from her hand and lets it fall. She yanks the tubes from her side, and gasps. A little liquid spurts from the tubes, and Gideon presses a hand to the spot where the needles were.

She stares at Harrow for a long time, long enough that Harrow really does start to worry that she’s created some slow monster, like Protesilaus, like her parents. Something even worse.

“Stop it,” Harrow demands. “Are you stupid? _Griddle_?”

That works. The nickname snaps Gideon out of it and she steps forward, trips as she steps down from the pedestal, stumbles. She’s even less graceful than Harrow remembers. Gideon’s only ever been graceful when she has a sword in her hand, but this isn’t a comfort now, not until Harrow’s sure.

Harrow starts to back away, but Gideon doesn’t stop her advance, comes in close and reaches for Harrow. Harrow steadies her sword, points it at Gideon with both hands.

That causes Gideon to stop and she takes a step back, hands in the air. She clears her throat, rolls her eyes, and then coughs into the crook of her arm. When she looks back up at Harrow, it looks like she’s trying very hard not to laugh. Warmth has returned to those eyes. Harrow recognizes them again for the first time and she feels her body relax. She lowers her sword, just a bit.

“It’s me, you moron,” Gideon says, and her voice sounds rough and unused, but so clearly Gideon that Harrow can’t help the smile that spreads across her face.

“Oh, fuck you,” Harrow says and throws the longsword to the floor with an echoing clang. “Fuck you! Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to say that. Fuck you, you absolutely ass! Fuck, you brainless lunk -- you -- you reckless monster. How dare you! How _dare_ you do that to me, leave me like that.”

Gideon steps forward and Harrow screws her eyes shut, shakes her head, pushes hard against Gideon’s chest.

“Harrow,” Gideon laughs, actually stumbling back at the force of Harrow’s push, yet still not taking Harrow seriously at all.

Harrow aches to hit Gideon harder, to hit her with everything she has, to make Gideon hurt like she’s hurt for a _century_.

“Do you have any idea how long it’s been? What we’ve been through? I’m going to tear you apart,” Harrow swears. “I’m going to rip you to shreds. I’m going to put you back together backwards and then I’m going to -- “

“Do you promise?” Gideon cuts in.

Harrow chokes on the rest of her words. Gideon sounds so raw, so desperate for _something_, and for once it’s a something that Harrow might actually be able to provide, a something that Harrow is well past ready to give. 

Gideon reaches out for Harrow, grasping hands pulling Harrow into a hug and she lifts Harrow right up off the ground. Harrow remembers how much Gideon seemed to like that -- sweeping Harrow off her feet, feeling Harrow freeze. 

Harrow’s had a lot of time to think about this moment over the years. She’s thought of every way that she might react, every way this first hug could go. She throws all these plans out the window, all plans for a calm and collected Harrowhark Nonagesimus, and she grabs Gideon back, holds on as tight as her hands can hold, fingers digging into the back of Gideon’s shoulder blades and legs wrapped tight around Gideon’s narrow waist. 

In a delicious reversal, it’s Gideon who freezes up for a moment, Gideon who clearly still expected a much different reaction, the old reaction.

Harrow savors this moment, the full body contact. Oh, finally. She can wait here like this, _held_. She can wait for Gideon to catch up. She presses her face into Gideon’s neck, breathes in the dust, the sweat, the putrefaction of this room that Gideon’s been confined to for a hundred years. 

She feels her back hit the wall, and she lets her head fall away from Gideon’s skin. She wants to see Gideon’s face, see what she’s thinking.

Gideon’s -- Gideon’s looking back at her in awe, in absolute wonder. Harrow holds that gaze, doesn’t dare look away, isn’t sure she even could.

“What is this?” Gideon asks, amazed. “No paint, no robe, not a trace of bone anywhere except in your ears, and on top of all that, you’re a hugger now too? Who are you and what have you done with my weird little necromancer?”

“Catch up, Griddle,” Harrow says, trying very hard not to smile. “We worked through _weird_ ages ago.” She leans in close to Gideon’s ear, lowers her voice as though trying to hide her words from this room of empty corpses. “Alone in my room, your soul bubbling up inside me, just my hands and anything I could come up with that made me think of you. That’s what you did to me. That’s all you left me with.”

It’s worth it for the look on Gideon’s face, for the visible slide of her brain off its tracks. 

Eventually Gideon does manage to find words, but the only words she can come up with are, “Shut up.” 

It isn’t an order, sounds more like an accusation of lying than anything else, but Harrow’s never been more honest, more serious.

“No really,” Gideon clarifies after another moment. “You’re fucking with me.”

“No,” Harrow promises. “Really.”

Gideon makes a strange grunting noise, and then Harrow’s back scrapes against the wall as Gideon surges forward, as she captures Harrow’s mouth in a kiss that crashes against Harrow, a cresting wave of desperation, a century of want and waiting. Harrow tastes her own blood on Gideon’s mouth, and she sucks at her cavalier’s lips, presses her tongue against Gideon’s teeth. She’s electrified by Gideon’s gasp.

Gideon uses the wall to support Harrow, begins pushing at Harrow’s clothes with her hands. She pushes Harrow’s shirt up at the waist, exposing the skin of Harrow’s stomach. Her large palms sear Harrow’s flesh, burning through her with each touch, and Harrow wonders how far they could get like this, how it would be to consummate a century of too much and not enough, suspended here in Gideon’s arms, her back pressed to a wall in a laboratory-turned-tomb, chock full of death. 

No. They deserve more than this.

Harrow pulls back from Gideon’s eager mouth, presses a hand to Griddle’s cheek. She’s _so fucking ready_, her entire body pulsing with need.

“Not here,” she says, though it pains her, her heart and her core crying out in frustration. 

She nods toward the corpses and Gideon turns, a hand at Harrow’s back to support her. Gideon turns and wrinkles her nose, suddenly acutely aware of that smell of old death that permeates the room. She sniffs her own shoulder and her face twists a little in horror.

“Oh gross,” she says. “I’ve been marinated in rotting cavalier. How are you even touching me right now?” She moves to set Harrow back on the ground, and Harrow’s legs tighten in response, refusing to let go.

Harrow doesn’t know how to explain that after a century of waiting, a little death is a disappointment, but it isn’t a deterrent, it’s no deal breaker here. Harrow’s seen enough to ignore this. And if it was the only place available to them, she would not have stopped Gideon for anything, but there’s a room with no corpses, with a bed and a bathroom, a room preserved by Canaan House for the last hundred years.

“I know where we can go. It’s a room off the atrium,” Harrow says. 

“Lead the way.”

Harrow is reluctant to release Gideon, but she can’t expect Griddle to carry her up twenty-five flights of stairs, through the Facility, and up that old loathsome ladder to the even more detested hatch. She could ask, and she’s relatively certain Gideon would at least try, but the last thing she wants is a spent Gideon, exhausted and ready for a nap as soon as they’re shut safely away in Cam and Corona’s old love nest. Harrow has other plans.

Harrow unwraps her legs and Gideon sets her to the floor. She gathers her things, picks up the longsword, and holds it out to Gideon. 

“Yours,” she says. 

“Oh,” Gideon says, sounding a little dumb, a little surprised, like Harrow wasn’t pointing the sword right at her just a few minutes ago.

Once the sword is in her hands, everything seems to click into place. Harrow watches as Gideon caresses it, another spike of arousal, a pulse and a curl in the gut. Gideon holds the sword up to the light, looks it over. 

She won’t find anything. Harrow’s taken careful care of it all these years. 

“She looks good,” Gideon says finally, her eyes shining a little when they look up and find Harrow. “Not as good as you. Let’s go.”

“Patience, Griddle.” It’s a ridiculous admonishment. Harrow is high with arousal, so wet and so ready, and the distance between this lab and the room, to a touch of civilization, feels equivalent to walking from the First to the Ninth through space and on foot. 

Harrow can’t wait any longer. She starts walking and she’s up a full flight of stairs before she looks back to make sure that Gideon follows. 

Griddle’s right behind her, eyes locked on Harrow, and Harrow’s face burns and her knees threaten to buckle.

They’re both quiet as they move through the Facility. It’s difficult to be here and not dredge up old memories, old promises, old haunts. Gideon breathes an audible sigh of relief upon stepping up out of the Facility hatch and Harrow reaches out, takes Gideon’s hand and pulls her toward the atrium.

Once inside the room, Harrow locks the door behind them. Gideon takes a cursory look around before making a beeline toward the bathroom, dropping her sword and pulling off clothes as she goes. 

With an exit like that, Harrow’s compelled to follow. 

She finds Gideon practically topless with someone’s old sonic toothbrush in her mouth, a stream of hot water already steaming up the empty shower in preparation. 

There’s a long smear of blood on Gideon’s side where she pulled out the needles and tubes, and Harrow steps forward to check the wound, any excuse to get her hands on bare skin. She leans down, kisses the slight curve of Gideon’s waist, touches the smear of blood with her tongue.

Gideon grunts softly around the toothbrush in her mouth and pushes a hand through Harrow’s hair. She throws her toothbrush to the counter and backs into the shower, pulling Harrow with her.

“Clothes,” Harrow says, but Gideon ignores her and steps under the spray in her trousers and bandeau.

It’s quite the sight, and Harrow audibly gasps before stepping into the water with Gideon. It looks better than it feels, the water hitting her clothing and pressing it to her skin, but that only matters for a moment, before Gideon’s pushing Harrow’s shirt up and over Harrow’s head, unbuttoning her own trousers and letting them fall to the floor.

There’s an awkward moment where Gideon realizes that she’s still wearing shoes and they aren’t the sort of shoes that one can simply kick off. She tries anyway and trips over the trousers, falling into Harrow, who just barely manages to keep them both upright.

“Fuck,” Gideon says. “Totally botched that.” 

Harrow feels Gideon start to shake in her arms, and realizes it’s laughter. And it’s contagious. It isn’t long before they’re both holding each other and giggling like children (not like _them_ as children, just like… how Harrow imagines children from places that weren’t the Ninth probably giggled, children who weren’t war crimes). Once Harrow’s pushed Gideon back upright, once they can see each other again, Harrow catches her breath and reigns herself in. She presses her lips together, tries to repress the stupid grin, and looks up to find Gideon still smiling, watching Harrow closely.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Gideon says. “You’re just -- I don’t know. It feels like this is the first time I’ve ever really seen you.”

“Don’t make it weird now, Nav,” Harrow warns, though Gideon is right. She’s never laughed so freely in front of anyone before, and certainly not in front of Gideon Nav.

Harrow kneels down to untie Gideon’s boots and then her own. She pulls the shoes from Gideon’s feet and throws them out of the shower along with Griddle’s soaked trousers, and then she’s looking up through the spray at Gideon’s long and lean body, black shorts and a strip of cloth across the chest the only things left that cover her skin. Gideon pulls the bandeau over head and God, she’s beautiful. Harrow works her fingers into the waist of Gideon’s underwear and slides them down until Harrow’s face to face with a thicket of red curls. She leans in to kiss Gideon’s mound and Gideon’s foot starts to slip. Her head knocks back against the wall of the shower with a crack.

“Shit,” Gideon says. “You’re fucking dangerous.”

They bathe quickly after that, eager to get at each other without fear of falling and cracking a skull on concrete. This moment has been over one hundred years in the making; no way is a deadly accident cutting it short now. They waste no time once they’re on the bed, desperate sucking kisses and groping hands, Gideon’s mouth tasting ever centimeter of Harrow’s small breasts, moaning as though it’s the best and only dessert she’s ever had. 

And then Harrow pushes Gideon back onto the bed, kisses a trail down her stomach until finally, _finally_.

Harrow isn’t truly satisfied until she has two fingers inside Gideon and her tongue on Gideon’s clit. A hundred years of wanting this, a hundred years of imagining exactly how it would happen, how Gideon would taste, the noises she’d make. A hundred years of cursing herself for not realizing what they could have had if she’d only stopped _hating_ herself for five stupid minutes and really looked at the girl standing in front of her. Harrow’s looking now. She’d like to keep looking for a long fucking time.

Gideon comes in no time, a litany of ridiculously flattering things flying from her mouth as her muscles tighten, gripping at Harrow’s fingers, her entire big body shaking beneath Harrow’s small hands.

Gideon doesn’t take much time to recover, she’s licking her lips and pushing at Harrow’s legs before Harrow’s caught her breath. That won’t do at all. Harrow has her work cut out for her.

“Let’s go,” Gideon says, impatient, ready.

Harrow’s legs fall open at Gideon’s touch and Gideon moans, low and dirty, at the sight. She reaches down and slides the pad of her thumb through Harrow’s dark hair until it slips into Harrow’s soaked center, brushing right up against her clit. Harrow starts, swears. 

“You’re so wet,” Gideon says amazed, thumb carefully working Harrow as Gideon soaks in each gasp, watches each twist of emotion as it lights up Harrow’s face. “Oh God, Harrow. This is amazing. You’re fucking pornographic.”

“You _are_ the pornography expert,” Harrow agrees, and Gideon bites Harrow’s hip in retaliation.

Gideon leans in and presses her nose to the patch of Harrow’s hair, nuzzles it with face.

“You’re filthy,” Harrow says, but fuck, Harrow _loves it_.

When Gideon’s tongue finally finds Harrow’s clit, Gideon’s the one that moans in pleasure at the contact, a moan that vibrates through Harrow, pulls an answering groan from Harrow’s throat.

Finally, just when Harrow’s about to beg, Gideon’s fingers push into Harrow and Harrow bears down on Gideon’s hand, desperate to have her as deep as she can get. Gideon’s thumb slides against Harrow’s clit as Harrow works herself on Gideon’s hand, and Gideon is perfect, so good, so _fucking_ good, and Harrow hates that they weren’t allowed those early fumbling years together, the awkward, delicious process of making it _weird_, but she’s mourned that loss for a century, and they’re here now, and --

“You’re so fucking good,” Harrow gasps. 

“Mm,” Gideon says, sucking kisses into Harrow’s thigh, her hip. 

Harrow’s hand slides down her body and covers Gideon’s, pressing Gideon closer, and then finally, when she can’t resist any longer, Harrow slides a finger into herself, slides it in beside Gideon’s two fingers, groans at the increase in pressure, the delicious stretch, the wet glide of her fingertip along Gideon’s buried digits.

“Holy shit,” Gideon curses. She shifts back so she’s kneeling over Harrow, freeing the hand she was using to support herself against the bed. She wastes no time, buries those fingers into the wet red curls between her own legs. Gideon’s coming again in seconds, her body convulsing as she kneels over Harrow, a breathtakingly erotic show. 

Harrow stills their joined hands, the pressure creating a pleasure that rolls through her body in waves, but she holds herself, determined to wait her turn, determined to let Gideon have this moment.

Griddle deserves it. She deserves an entire week of nothing but orgasms -- and maybe that’s what she’ll get. Maybe the remaining destruction can wait, maybe this room will stop time for them too.

“You’re so fucking good,” Harrow repeats, and she’s never meant anything more in her entire life. Gideon leans forward, a gleam in her eye, pupils blown, black and ringed in brilliant gold. 

“You know why I’m so fucking good?” she asks Harrow, her voice low, a growl so close to Harrow’s ear. Such typical Gideon bravato, but Gideon is shaking with it, and it isn’t just the orgasm. It’s more than that and Harrow can’t help but ask. 

“Why?” 

“I was made for you,” Gideon says. “That’s the entire fucking point of me, remember? You.”

Harrow shudders. She releases her grip on the bed, grabs for the hand that Gideon used to pleasure herself. Harrow pushes Gideon’s fingers, still wet with orgasm, into her mouth, desperate to have this entire moment, to keep it, to consume.

“I’m yours,” Harrow promises, mouth and teeth on Gideon’s one hand, her fingers working Gideon’s other frantically within her. She’s so fucking close. She’s been so close for so long. “If you want me, I’m yours until the end.”

“And what about then?”

“Still yours,” Harrow breathes, riding the delicious press and curl of Gideon’s fingers. 

Gideon raises her eyebrows, tries to whistle, fails. “Shit,” she says. “Okay.”

She pulls Harrow’s hand away, slides in another finger to make up for the loss. Harrow groans, hips pushing to meet Gideon’s hand, and then Gideon’s mouth is on her, lips and her perfect soft tongue, and Harrow’s finds Gideon’s head, fingers tangled in that beautiful hair, holds her cavalier firmly, exactly where she needs her. 

Harrow cries out as Gideon pushes her over the edge, the culmination of every childhood battle, every cutting word, every bite and push and scream. The culmination of a century of awe and anger. After all Harrow’s done, Griddle still gave her life willingly, fueled Harrow, burned hot and bright for a hundred years. Harrow’s body shudders at the memory, at the feeling of Gideon hot and boiling within her. She holds Gideon’s head now, firm and real, and she comes again, a white hot scream that courses through her veins, curling her toes and convulsing her torso.

Harrow collapses back onto the bed, still charged, still shaking. She pulls at Gideon until Gideon laughs and complies, coming up to cover Harrow’s body with her own. Now that they’re apart, Harrow wants nothing more than to climb inside Gideon’s skin, to push their bodies so close that they melt into each other, reform again as one soul.

They’ve been there, done that, and wanting it so badly you drip with it is different than the reality of one soul burning another for eternity. Gideon holds Harrow to the bed, her weight a comfort, grounding Harrow, and it’s so much _better_. 

**

They lie naked, spread across the bed, limbs tangled and bodies spent, at least for this moment. 

Gideon asks questions, and Harrow answers them honestly. She provides Gideon with a condensed version of the last century. She tells Gideon about the Tomb, about Alecto, of Coronabeth Tridentarius’s heroic turn that brought about the Fall of Ianthe. She fills Griddle in on the fate of Camilla Hect, the Emperor’s last and final death at the hands of his most successful experiment, of the Second Rebirth, and finally, of the last Lyctor Harrowhark Nonagesimus. 

No more. Never again. 

Harrow’s honestly not sure what’s left, and she’s afraid to find out. Maybe she won’t ever even try to raise another bone. This is it. Retirement.

And most of all, Harrow owes Gideon her life.

“What will you do now?” Harrow asks. She’s kept her promise. Gideon is finally free of the Ninth House, and if she chooses it, she’s free of Harrowhark Nonagesimus. They said a lot of words while they were soaking in each other, but the truth is this: there is no longer a Locked Tomb to protect. There’s no Ninth to be beholden to. Harrow is keeping her promise; Gideon’s life is her own. 

“I don’t know.” Gideon says. She keeps glancing down at their bodies, her look still one of disbelief. “You said it’s the end of the world. So what’s left to do? I’ve been back -- what? Less than a day? -- and I’ve already checked the most important item off my bucket list.”

It isn’t the end of the world, and Harrow plans to correct Gideon until her brain catches on that last bit. Harrow can’t even imagine how she would have reacted to this statement back when she was young and afraid to let the world in, afraid to let anyone close.

“I was not on your _bucket list_.” 

“You’ve always been on my bucket list one way or another. Kick Harrow off the top tier of Drearburh, convince Harrow’s own skeletons to throttle her, just plain never see Harrow again, and then finally, right at the end there, yeah, this was added.”

“You can still achieve some of those others,” Harrow offers, carefully.

“Nah. I’m replacing everything else on the list with a list of filthy things I’d like to do with the Reverend Daughter -- Former Reverend Daughter. Just variations on this. Over and over and over again, until we’ve made up for lost time.”

“You’re exactly the same,” Harrow says, amazed. “I burned your soul for a century and you’re -- you.”

Gideon’s face goes dark, just for a second, and Harrow wonders if Gideon was fully truthful when she said she felt nothing.

“Did it hurt, Griddle?” Harrow asks. “You can tell me, honestly. You don’t have to, but I can take it if you want to talk.”

Gideon shrugs. “I don’t remember it. Not really. It feels like yesterday that we were out fighting Cytherea, but it feels like a super long time too. And when I think about the siphoning challenge, I can feel that pain in my gut, in every part of me, and I think what I’m feeling is more than memories of just that challenge, if that makes sense? It feels like it’s more, but it also feels less contained? Like there’s some distance or a disconnect. So yeah, I think it hurt a lot of the time, and I think it hurt _a lot_, but it doesn’t hurt now, and it feels like it won’t hurt again.”

Harrow has never been siphoned, but she felt the pain of severing their souls, and if siphoning is even a fraction of that pain, it’s more than anyone should volunteer to bear, it’s more than a soul should be able to handle.

“I would do it again,” Gideon offers. “If we were in that same place, with those same choices, I would do it exactly the same way again.”

Harrow would change those moments, would not let it happen again. She doesn’t say so. She doesn’t interrupt Gideon’s confession.

“So how bad ass were we?” Gideon asks abruptly. Her fingers pull absently at Harrow’s left nipple. Harrow’s tempted to knock her hand away -- too much, too soon -- but she’s willing to wait it out, let Gideon’s fingers light her up again, guide her back onto that path, prepare her for another round. “Could we dissolve ourselves into greasy blood rain?”

“Not blood rain, no. But we could become some pretty extraordinary bone constructs.”

“Bone constructs,” Gideon groans, and then her face lights up, but Harrow cuts her off before she can speak --

“I don’t want to hear this joke about how you gave me a boner, Griddle. I know it’s coming and it’s terrible and not at all a funny joke.”

Gideon snaps her mouth shut, but her hand continues to work at Harrow’s small breast, tracing the swell at the edge of it, cupping it in her palm. “You know, I didn’t think it was possible, but you grew up to be an even weirder creep than you already were.”

“You have no idea,” Harrow agrees, then reconsiders. “Or maybe you do. I’ve had a century of you in my head and my heart and my veins.”

Gideon’s grinning now. “And now you’ve had me --”

Harrow’s laugh is abrupt and embarrassing, a loud bark. “Don’t say that either!”

“Don’t say it, but you were totally comfortable _doing_ it. God, Harrow.” Gideon’s hand trails down, sliding between Harrow’s legs to fold over Harrow, fingertips tucked in gently against wet folds. Harrow closes her eyes, swallows.

“Geriatric Harrow is a lot more fun than I imagined,” Gideon concludes.

“Geriatric!”

“Oh, come on Nonagesimus. You’re older now than Sister Nitenance ever was, and you remember how crusty and crazy that old bat got toward the end.”

“Sister Nitenance was not a Lyctor.”

“Sounds like semantics to me.”

“And it sounds like you’ve got a weird sexual thing for geriatric old crones to me, Nav.”

Gideon snorts. “Gross. But yeah, you might be right. That’s what growing up on the Ninth will do to a person.”

Harrow pulls Gideon in for a kiss, thorough and deep.

“Speaking of old -- what about your girl?” Gideon asks, her palm pressing pulses of gentle pressure against Harrow’s mound. “I know she woke up, but I -- “ Harrow feels her shrug. “It’s all more impressions than memories of what happened.”

“She was never my girl,” Harrow corrects. “And she’s gone.”

“What was she?”

“She was like Teacher -- an experiment. She was a necromancer forced into a cavalier, the inversion of the Emperor, stronger, breathtaking and righteous.”

“Why was she locked away? Did she go all Cytherea on Him?”

“Ego, mostly,” Harrow suggests. “Power. You can’t put someone’s soul into another body and have the two souls inhabit the form equally. Or you can -- but you don’t get the same power that way; you get Teacher. It isn’t the same. The vessel’s original soul has to remain primary, the other souls are knowledge and fuel and they can’t -- You put a necromancer into a cavalier and you lose the necromancer, you enhance the cavalier with a necromancer’s talents. A necromancer set on ultimate power couldn’t give up that control, could not feel that he’s achieved his true goal.”

“Ew,” Gideon says. “Sounds up there with killing babies for power.”

“Yes,” Harrow agrees. “One flesh, one end was never meant to be about equality, it was always to benefit the necromancer, always. So He locked her away, a failed experiment, the only thing He ever created that was more powerful than Himself. He destroyed a planet -- this planet -- to contain her the first time. He destroyed three trying to stop her the second time around, and in the end, she was magnificent and He failed and He fell.”

“You loved her,” Gideon says. Harrow opens her eyes and finds Gideon watching her, her eyes warm, her mouth soft. 

“We were her Hand far longer than we were ever His.”

“And you loved her,” Gideon presses. “You’ve always loved her, since you were a kid.”

“I did,” Harrow agrees. She doesn’t know how to articulate how different it is, to assure Gideon that it doesn’t change what they’re doing here and now. Gideon, for her part, is simply stating a fact, doesn’t seem inclined to ask for Harrow to spell it out, isn’t asking for more at all.

“So did you,” Harrow offers. “I felt it.”

Gideon contemplates this and then shrugs. “I probably did. I wish I could have seen her. I have all of these ideas in my head of what sort of girl is so impressive to Harrowhark Nonagesimus that she’d choose to live just in case she wakes up. I would have liked to remember that.”

“You know, I did it all for you,” Harrow says. “Everything I did was so that I could get you back.”

“You’ve got me,” Gideon says. “What will you do with me now?”

“Nothing,” Harrow says. “Your life is yours.”

“Idiot, I was going for sexy inuendo.”

“I know, but I’m serious.” Gideon removes her hand from Harrow, lies back beside Harrow on the bed. She rests her head on Harrow’s shoulder. Harrow presses her cheek to Gideon’s hair.

“What are you going to do when we’re done here?” Gideon asks. Harrow holds Gideon and tries not to think about the only other time she’s done this before, desperately holding Gideon’s bleeding body in her arms, praying that what was done could be undone. 

Harrow shrugs, kisses the top of Gideon’s head. “I have one task left to complete. One last thing that I promised to do.”

“What’s that?”

“I promised that I would destroy this House and everything in it, including myself.”

“Including yourself,” Gideon repeats, her voice going a little cold, a little hard.

Harrow shakes her head, holds Gideon tighter in reassurance. “That’s done. I’ve destroyed myself as I was, I gave back the life I owed. So just the house now.”

“How?”

Harrow can’t quite stop the smile. “I have a shuttle full of explosives.”

Gideon twists her head back to look at Harrow. She squints at the smile on Harrow’s face, then catches Harrow’s eye, eyebrows raised. Harrow holds the gaze, doesn’t waiver. 

Finally Gideon settles back against Harrow, her hand resting over Harrow’s breast as she snuggles into Harrow’s embrace.

“Fuck this death trap,” Gideon states. “I’m helping you set those bombs. And then I propose that we find somewhere nice and quiet with a lot of bones for you and a place to swing my sword, and most importantly, a giant comfy bed. My bucket list is getting longer by the second.”

“You’re a nasty pervert,” Harrow concludes. 

“Harrow,” Gideon admonishes. “Don’t make this _weird._”

Harrow starts to protest, but Gideon’s ready and silences Harrow with a kiss. Harrow holds on and lets Gideon kiss her back to life.

She can’t ask for a better end than that.


End file.
